ii£?V 


THE    NON-RELIGION 


OF   THE    FUTURE 


A  SOCIOLOGICAL  STUDY 


TRANSLATED   FROM   THE   FRENCH 


OF 


M.   GUYAU 


\^  OF   THF  '^ 

UNIVERSITY 


.  ' ',   ■  >'  '  '• 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY   HOLT   AND   COMPANY 

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Copyright,  1897, 

BY 

HENRY  HOLT  &  CO. 


THE    MERSHON   COMPANY   PRESS, 
RAHWAY,   N.    J. 


?<■  OF  THK  r 

UNIVERSITY 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


INTRODUCTION. 

I.  Sociality  the  basis  of  religion— Its  definition. 

II.  The  connection  between  religion,  aesthetics,  and  morals. 

III.  The  inevitable  decomposition  of  all  systems  of  dogmatic  religion  ; 
the  state  of  "  non-religion  "  toward  which  the  human  mind  seems  to  tend 
—The  exact  sense  in  which  one  must  understand  the  non-religion  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  "religion  of  the  future." 

IV.  The  value  and  utility,  for  the  time  being,  of  religion  ;  its  ultimate 
insufficiency, ^ 

©act    ifirst. 
THE  GENESIS  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE 

SOCIETIES. 

CHAPTER  I. 
RELIGIOUS   PHYSICS. 

Importance  of  the  Problem  of  the  Origin  of  Religion— Universality 
OF  Religious  Beliefs  or  Superstitions — Variability  of  Religions  and 
Religious  Evolution. 

I.  Idealist  theory  which  attributes  the  origin  of  religion  to  a  notion  of 
-  he  infinite— Hehotheism  of  Max  Miiller  and  Von  Hartmann— M.  Renan's 
Instinct  for  Divinity. 

II.  Theory  of  a  worship  of  the  dead  and  of  spirits— Herbert  Spencer- 
Spencer's  objections  to  the  theory  of  the  attribution  of  a  soul  to  natural 
forces. 

III.  Answer  to  objections— Religious  physics  sociological  in  form,  and 
the  substitution  of  relations  between  malevolent  or  beneficent  conscious 
beings  for  relations  between  natural  forces — Sociomorphism  of  primitive 
Peoples, 21 

CHAPTER  II. 

RELIGIOUS   METAPHYSICS. 

I.  Animism  or  polydemonism— Formation  of  the  dualist  conception  of 
spirit — Social  relations  with  spirits 

II.  Providence  and  miracles— The  evolution  of  the  dualist  conception  of 

iii 


IV  TABLE   OF  CONTENTS. 

a  special  providence — The  conception  of  miracles — The  supernatural  and 
the  natural — Scientific  explanation  and  miracles — Social  a.nd  moral  modi- 
fications in  the  character  of  man,  owing  to  supposed  social  relations  with  a 
special  providence — Increasing  sentiment  of  irresponsibility  and  passivity 
and  "  absolute  dependence." 

III.  The  creation — Genesis  of  the  notion  of  creation — The  dualistic  ele- 
ments in  this  idea — Monism — Classification  of  systems  of  religious  meta- 
physics— Criticism  of  the  classification  proposed  by  Von  Hartmann — 
Criticism  of  the  classification  proposed  by  Auguste  Comte,  .         .       80 

CHAPTER  III. 

RELIGIOUS    MORALS.  ,J 

L  The  laws  which  regulate  the  social  relations  between  gods  and  men — 
Morality  and  immorality  in  primitive  religions — Extension  of  friendly  and 
hostile  relations  to  the  sphere  of  the  gods — Primitive  inability  in  matters 
of  conscience,  as  in  matters  of  art,  to  distinguish  the  great  from  the 
monstrous. 

II.  The  moral  sanction  in  the  society  which  includes  gods  and  men — 
Patronage — That  divine  intervention  tends  always  to  be  conceived  after 
the  model  of  human  intervention  and  to  sanction  it. 

III.  Worship  and  religious  rites — Principles  of  reciprocity  and  propor- 
tionality in  the  exchange  of  services — Sacrifice — Principle  of  coercion  and 
incantation — Principle  of  habit  and  its  relation  to  rites — Sorcery — Sacer- 
dotalism— Prophecy — The  externals  of  worship — Dramatization  and  re- 
ligious aesthetics. 

IV.  Subjective  worship — Adoration  and  love  ;  their  psychological 
origin, .     113 

Ipart  Secon^. 

THE  DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS   IN  EXISTING 

SOCIETIES. 

CHAPTER  I. 

DOGMATIC    FAITH. 

\.  Narrow  dogmatic  faith — The  credulity  of  primitive  man  :  First, 
spontaneous  faith  in  the  senses  and  imagination  ;  Second,  faith  in  the 
testimony  of  superior  men  ;  Third,  faith  in  the  divine  word,  in  revelation, 
and  in  the  sacred  texts — The  literalness  of  dogmatic  faith — Inevitable 
intolerance  of  narrow  dogmatic  faith — Belief  in  dogma,  revelation,  salva- 
tion, and  damnation  all  result  in  intolerance — Modern  tolerance. 

II.  Broad  dogmatic  faith — Orthodox  Protestantism — Dogmas  of  orthodox 
Protestantism — Rational  consequences  of  these  dogmas — Logical  failure 
of  orthodox  Protestantism. 


TABLE   OF  CONTENTS.  V 

III.  The  dissolution  of  dogmatic  faith  in  modern  society — Reasons  that 
render  this  dissolution  inevitable — Comparative  influence  of  the  various 
sciences;  influence  of  public  instruction,  of  means  of  communication,  of 
industry  even  and  of  commerce,  etc. — The  disappearance  of  belief  in  ora- 
cles and  prophecies — Gradual  disappearance  of  the  belief  in  miracles,  in 
devils,  etc, 136 

CHAPTER  II. 
SYMBOLIC   AND    MORAL   FAITH.     / 

I.  Substitution  of  metaphysical  symbolism  for  dogma — Liberal  Protes- 
tantism— Comparison  with  Brahmanism — Substitution  of  moral  symbolism 
for  metaphysical  symbolism — Moral  faith — Kant — Mill — Matthew  Ar- 
nold— A  literary  explanation  of  the  Bible  substituted  for  a  literal 
explanation. 

II.  Criticism  of  symbolic  faith — Inconsequence  of  liberal  Protestant- 
ism— Is  Jesus  of  a  more  divine  type  than  other  great  geniuses? — Does  the 
Bible  possess  a  greater  authority  in  matters  of  morals  than  any  other 
masterpiece  of  poetry? — Criticism  of  Matthew  Arnold's  system — Final 
absorption  of  religions  by  morality,         .......     167 

CHAPTER  III. 
DISSOLUTION   OF   RELIGIOUS   MORALITY.    / 

I .  The  first  durable  element  of  religious  morality  :  Respect — Alteration 
of  respect  by  the  addition  of  the  notion  of  the  fear  of  God  and  divine 
vengeance. 

II.  Second  durable  element  of  religious  morality  :  Love — Alteration  of 
this  element  by  the  addition  of  ideas  of  grace,  predestmation,  damnation — 
Caducous  elements  of  religious  morality — Mysticism — Antagonism  of 
divine  love  and  human  love — Asceticism — Excesses  of  asceticism — Espe- 
cially in  the  religions  of  the  East — Conception  of  sin  in  the  modern  mind. 

III.  Subjective  worship  and  prayer — The  notion  of  prayer  from  the  point 
of  view  of  modern  science  and  philosophy — Ecstasy— The  survival  of 
prayer, 195 

CHAPTER  IV. 

RELIGION   AND   NON-RELIGION   AMONG   THE    PEOPLE. 

I.  Is  religious  sentiment  an  innate  and  imperishable  possession  of  hu- 
manity?— Frequent  confusion  of  a  sentiment  for  religion  with  a  sentiment 
for  philosophy  and  morals — Renan — Max  Miiller — Difference  between  the 
evolution  of  belief  in  the  individual  and  the  evolution  of  belief  in  the 
race — Will  the  disappearance  of  faith  leave  a  void  behind  ? 


/ 


TABLE    OF  CONTEA'TS. 

II.  Will  the  dissolution  of  religion  result  in  a  dissolution  of  morality 
among  the  people  ? — Is  religion  the  sole  safeguard  of  social  authority  and 
public  morality  ? — Christianity  and  socialism — Relation  between  non-re- 
ligion and  immorality,  according  to  statistics. 

III.  Is  Protestantism  a  necessary  tfansition  stage  between  religion  and 
free-thought? — Projects  for  Protestantizing  France — Michelet,  Quinet,  De 
Lavejfiye,  Renouvier,  and  Pillon — Intellectual,  moral,  and  political  sui^eri- 
opty  of  Protestantism — Utopian  character  of  the  project — Uselessness,  for 

urposes  of  morals,  of  substituting  one  religion  for  another — Is  the  pos- 
session of  religion  a  condition  sine  qua  non  of  superiority  in  the  struggle 
for  existence  ? — Objections  urged  against  France  and  the  French  Revolu- 
tion by  Matthew  Arnold  ;  Greece  and  Judea  compared,  France  and 
Protestant  nations  compared — Critical  examination  of  Matthew  Arnold's 
theory — Cannot  free-thought,  science,  and  art  evolve  their  respective 
ideals  from  within  ?  226 


CHAPTER   V. 
RELIGION   AND  NON-RELIGION  AND   THE   CHILD, 

I.  Decline  of  religious  education— Defects  of  this  education,  in  especial 
in  Catholic  countries — Means  of  lightening  these  defects — The  priest — 
The  possibility  of  state-action  on  the  priest. 

II.  Education  provided  by  the  state — Primary  instruction — The  school- 
master— Secondary  and  higher  instruction — Should  the  history  of  re- 
ligion be  introduced  into  the  curriculum? 

III.  Education  at  home — Should  the  father  take  no  part  in  the  religious 
education  of  his  children — Evils  of  a  preliminary  religious  education  to  be 
followed  by  disillusionment — The  special  question  of  the  immortality  of 
the  soul  :  what  should  be  said  to  children  about  death,         .        .        .     272 

CHAPTER    VI. 
RELIGION   AND   NON-RELIGION   AMONG   WOMEN. 

Are  women  inherently  predisposed  toward  religion  and  even  toward 
superstition  ? — The  nature  of  feminine  intelligence — Predominance  of  the 
imagination — Credulity — Conservatism — Feminine  sensibility — Predomi- 
nance of  sentiment — Tendency  to  mysticism — Is  the  moral  sentiment 
among  women  based  upon  religion — Influence  of  religion  and  of  non-reli- 
gion upon  modesty  and  love — Origin  of  modesty — Love  and  perpetual 
virginity — M.  Renan's  paradoxes  on  the  subject  of  monastic  vows — How 
woman's  natural  proclivities  may  be  turned  to  account  b\^  free-thought — 
Influence  exercised  by  the  wife's  faith  over  the  husband — Instance  of  a 
conversion  to  free-thought 295 


TABLE    OF  CONIENTS.  vii 

CHAPTER    111. 

THE    EFFECT   OF    RELIGION    AND    NON-RELIGION    ON    POPULA- 
TION  AND   THE   FUTURE   OF   THE   RACE. 

I.  Importance  of  the  problem  of  population — Antagonism  between  nu- 
merical strength  and  wealtli — Necessity  of  numbers  for  the  maintenance 
and  progress  of  the  race — Necessity  of  giving  the  advantage  of  numbers  to 
the  superior  races — Problem  of  population  in  France— Its  relation  to  the 
religious  problem — Are  the  reasons  for  the  restriction  of  the  number  of 
births  physiological,  moral,  or  economic  ?— Malthusianism  in  France — The 
true  national  peril. 

II.  Remedies — Is  a  return  to  religion  possible  ?— Religious  powerlessness 
and  growing  tolerance  in  the  matter — The  influence  that  the  law  might 
exercise  upon  the  causes  of  small  families — Enumeration  of  these  causes — \ 
Reform  of  the  law  in  regard  to  filial  duty — (Support  of  parents) — Reform 
of  the  law  of  inheritance — Reform  of  the  militar}'-  law  for  the  purpose  of 
favouring  large  families  and  of  permitting  emigration  to  the  French 
colonies. 

III.  Influence  of  public  education  :  its  necessit}'  as  a  substitute  for  re-  i' 
ligious  sentiment 315 

Ipart   <rbir&. 

NON-RELIGION  OF  THE  FUTURE. 

CHAPTER  I. 

RELIGIOUS   INDIVIDUALISM. 

I.  Is  a  renovation  of  religion  possible?  i.  Is  a  unification  of  the  great  re- 
ligions to-day  existing  possible  ?  2.  Is  the  appearance  of  a  new  religion  to 
be  expected? — Future  miracles  impossible — Religious  poetry  not  to  be  ex- 
pected— Men  of  genius  capable  of  sincerely  and  naively  labouring  in  the 
creating  of  a  new  religion  not  to  be  expected — Impossibility  of  adding  to 
the  original  stock  of  religious  ideas — No  new  cult  possible — Last  attempts 
at  a  new  cult  in  America  and  in  France — The  Positivist  cult — Ethical  cul- 
ture— Can  socialism  renew  religion  ? — Advantages  and  defects  of  socialistic 
experiments. 

*  II.  Religious  anomy  and  the  substitution  of  doubt  for  faith — i.  Will  the 
absence  of  religion  result  in  scepticism  ?  Will  the  number  of  sceptics  in- 
crease with  the  disappearance  of  religion  ?  2.  Substitution  of  doubt  for 
faith — Genuinely  religious  character  of  doubt. 

III.  Substitution  of  metaphysical  hypothesis  for  dogma — Difference  be- 
tween   religious   sentiment  and  instinct    for  metaphysics — Imperishable  v^ 
character  of  the  latter — Sentiment  at  once  of  the  limits  of  science  and  of 
the  infinity  of  our  ideal — Spencer's  attempted  reconciliation  of  .science  and 
religion — Confusion  of  religion  with  metaphysics,         ....     350 


viii  TABLE   OF  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  II. 

ASSOCIATION.      THE    PERMANENT    ELEMENT  OF  RELIGIONS   IN 

SOCIAL   LIFE. 

Social    Aspect  ok  Rei.k;ions — Religious    Commvmties  and   Churches — 
Ideal  Tyte  of  Voluntary  Association— Its  Diverse  Forms. 

I.  Associations  for  intellectual  purposes — How  such  associations  might 
preserve  the  most  precious  elements  of  religions — Societies  for  the  ad-, 
vancement  of  science,  philosophy,  religion — Dangers  to  avoid — Populariza- 
tion of  scientific  ideas  ;  propagandism  in  the  interests  of  science. 

II.  Associations  for  nionvl  purposes — Tendency  of  religion  in  the  best 
minds  to  become  one  with  charity — Pity  and  charity  will  survive  dogma — 
Role  of  enthusiasm  in  moral  propagandism — Necessity  of  hope  to  sustain 
enthusiasm — Possibility  of  propagating  moral  ideas  :  i.  Apart  from  myths 
and  religious  dogmas  :  2.  Apart  from  any  notion  of  a  religious  sanction — 
Baudelaire's  conception  of  a  criminal  and  happy  hero— Criticism  of  that 
conception— Worship  of  the  memory  of  the  dead. 

III.  Associations  for  aesthetic  purpose,^ — Worship  of  art  and  nature — 
Art  and  poetry  will  sever  their  connection  with  religion  and  will  survive 
it — Necessity  of  developing  the  aesthetic  sentiment  and  the  worship  of  art, 
as  the  religious  sentiment  becomes  more  feeble — Poetry,  eloquence, 
music  ;  their  role  in  the  future— Final  substitution  of  art  for  rites — Wor- 
ship of  nature — Feeling  for  nature  originally  an  essential  element  of  the 
religious  sentiment — Superiority  of  a  worship  of  nature  over  worship  of 
human  art — Nature  is  the  true  temple  of  the  future,     ....     391 

CHAPTER  III. 
THEISM. 

Review  of  the  Principal  Metaphysical  Hypotheses  which  will 

Replace  Dogma. 

I.  Introduction — Progress  of  metaphysical  hypotheses — Metaphysical 
hypotheses  destined  to  increasing  diversity  in  details,  and  increasing 
agreement  on  essential  points — Importance  of  the  moral  element  in  meta- 
physical hypotheses — The  part  played  by  conscience  in  human  morality 
will  not  diminish,  as  Mr.  Spencer  says — Sympathetic  groups  under  which 
divers  systems  of  metaphysics  will  be  ranged. 

II.  Theism— I.  Probable  fate  of  the  creation  hypothesis — The  author  of 
the  world  conceived  as  a  prime  mover — Eternity  of  movement — The  au- 
thor of  the  world  conceived  as  a  creator  properly  so  called — Illusion 
involved  in  the  conception  of  nothing — Criticism  of  the  creation  hypothesis 
from  the  point  of  view  of  morals  ;  the  problem  of  evil  and  of  the  responsi- 
bility of  the  creator — Attempts  to  save  optimism — Hvpothesis  of  a  God 
creating  free  agents,  "  workmen  "and  not  "  work  " — Reciprocal  determin- 


TABLE    OF  CONTENTS.  ix 

ism  and  the  illusion  of  spontaneity — Immorality  of  the  temptation — 
Hypothesis  of  the  fall,  its  impossibility — God  the  tempter — Lucifer  and 

God 2.  Probable  fate  of  the  notion  of  Providence — H3-potheses  to  explain 

a  special  Providence  and  miracles  thus  insulScient — Hypothesis  of  a  non- 
omnipotent  God  proposed  by  John  Stuart  Mill — The  God  of  Comtism — 
Religion  should  be  not  solely  human  but  cosmic — The  fate  of  the  philo- 
sophical idea  of  God — Rational  religion  proposed  by  the  neo-Kantians— 
Ultimate  transformation  of  the  notion  of  divinity  and  of  Providence- 
Human  Providence  and  progressive  divinity  in  the  world,  .         .     424 

CHAPTER  IV. 

PANTHEISM. 

Review  of  the  Principal  Metaphysical  Hypotheses  which  will 
Replace  Dogma. — Continued. 

I.  Optimistic  pantheism— Transformation  of  transcendent  Deism  into 
immanent  theism  and  pantheism— Disanthropomorphized  God,  according 
to  :Messrs.  Fiske  and  Spencer— Diverse  forms  of  pantheism — Optimistic 
and  intellectualistic  pantheism  of  Spinoza— Objections,  Spinoza's  fatalism — 
The  moral  significance  that  might  be  lent  to  pantheism  by  the  introduction 
of  some  notion  of  a  final  cause— Qualities  and  defects  of  pantheism— Con- 
ception of  unity  upon  which  it  is  founded— This  conception  criticised— Its 
possible  subjectivity. 

II.  Pessimistic  pantheism— Pessimistic  interpretation  of  religions  in 
Germany— I.  Causes  of  the  progress  of  pessimism  in  the  present  epoch — 
Progress  of  pantheistic  metaphysics  and  of  positive  science— Penalties  in- 
cident to  thought  and  reflection— Mental  depression  and  sense  of  power- 
lessness,  etc. — 2.  Is  pessimism  curable  ? — Possible  remedies — The  labour 
problem  and  the  future  of  society — Illusions  involved  in  pessimism— Inex- 
actitude of  its  estimate  of  pleasures  and  pains — Quotation  from  Leopardi — 
Criticism  of  the  practical  results  of  pessimism— Nirvana— An  experiment 
in  Nirvana — Will  pessimistic  pantheism  be  the  religion  of  the  future  ?    452 

CHAPTER   V. 
IDEALISM,    MATERIALISM,    MONISM. 

Review  of  the  Principal  Metaphysical  Hypotheses  which  will 
Replace  Dogma. — Concluded. 

I.  Idealism — Different  forms  of  idealism  :  subjective  idealism,  objective 
idealism  :  The  whole  of  existence  resolved  into  a  mode  of  mental  exist- 
ence— Value  of  idealism  considered  from  point  of  view  of  the  religious 
sentiment — Most  specious  of  contemporary  idealisms:  Possibility  of  univer- 
sal progress  in  the  hypothesis  of  radical  spontaneity  and  of  "freedom  " — 
Reconciliation  between  determinism  and  the   conception    of  freedom — 


X  TABLE    OF  CONTENTS. 

Moral  idealism  as  a  possible  substitute  for  religious  sentiment  ;  Depend- 
ence of  the  universe  on  the  principle  of  goodness. 

II.  Materialism— Difficulty  in  defining  absolute  materialism  :  Matter— 
The  atom— Nebular  hypothesis— Hydrogene— Necessity  of  supplementing 
materialism  by  some  theory  of  the  origin  of  life— The  latest  conception  of 
materialism  :  Conception  of  infinite  divisibility  and  infinite  extensibility. 

III.  Monism  and  the  fate  of  worlds— Current  of  contemporary  systems 
toward  monism— Scientific  interpretation  of  monism— The  world  con- 
ceived monistically  as  a  becoming  and  as  a  life — Scientific  formulae  for 
life — Progress  consists  in  the  gradual  confusion  of  these  two  formulae — 
That  the  rise  of  morality  and  religion  can  be  accounted  for  without  the 
presupposition  of  any  final  cause — Metaphysical  and  moral  expectations  in 
regard  to  the  destiny  of  the  world  and  of  humanity,  it  maybe,  founded  on 
scientific  monism— Facts  which  appear  to  be  inconsistent  with  these  ex- 
pectations—Pessimistic conception  of  dissolution  that  is  complementary  to 
the  conception  of  evolution — Is  the  immanence  of  dissolution  demon- 
strable ? — Natural  devices  for  the  perpetuation  of  the  "fittest" — Role  of 
intelligence,  of  numbers,  etc. — Calculation  of  probabilities— Is  eternity  a 
parte  post  a  ground  of  discouragement  or  of  hope— Probable  existence  of 
thinking  beings  in  other  worlds  :  the  planets,  possibility  of  the  existence 
of  beings  superior  to  man- Survival  of  the  conception  of  gods— Hypothe- 
sis of  intercosmic  consciousness  and  of  a  universal  society. 

IV.  Destiny  of  the  human  race— The  hypothesis  of  immortality  from  the 
point  of  view  of  monism— Two  possible  conceptions  of  immortality— Eter- 
nal or  untemporal  existence  and  continuation  of  life  in  some  superior 
forms— I.  Hypothesis  of  eternal  life— its  function  in  antique  religions,  in 
Platonism,  and  in  the  systems  of  Spinoza,  Kant,  and  Schopenhauer- 
Eternal  life  and  the  subsistence  of  the  individual— Distinction  made  by 
Schopenhauer  and  various  other  philosophers  between  individuality  and 
personality— Eternal  life  problematical  and  transcendent— Aristocratic 
tendency  of  the  theory  of  eternal  life— Hypothesis  of  conditional  immor- 
tality—Criticism of  the  hypothesis  of  conditional  immortality  ;  incompati- 
bility of  this  notion  with  that  of  divine  goodness— II.  Hypothesis  of  a 
continuation  of  the  present  life  and  its  evolution  into  some  superior  form— 
What  sort  of  immortality  the  theory  of  evolution  permits  us  to  hope  for— 
Immortality  of  one's  labours  and  conduct— True  conception  of  such  im- 
mortality—Its relation  to  the  laws  of  heredity,  atavism,  natural  selection- 
Immortality  of  the  individual— Objections  drawn  from  science— Protesta- 
tions of  affection  against  the  annihilation  of  the  person— Resulting  anti- 
nomy—III.  Modern  opposition  between  the  conception  oi  function  and 
the  conception  of  simple  substance,  in  which  ancient  philosophy  endeav- 
ours to  find  a  proof  of  immortality— Peripatetic  theory  of  Wundt  and 
modern  philosophers  on  the  nature  of  the  soul— Immortality  as  a  continua- 
tion of  function,  proved  not  by  the  simplicity,  but  by  the  complexity  of 
consciousness— Relation  between  complexity  and  instability— Three 
stages  of  social  evolution— Analogy  of  conscience  with  a  society,  collective 
character  of  individual  consciousness— Conception  of  progressive  immor- 


TABLE   OF  CONTENTS.  xi 

tality — Last  product  of  evolution  and  natural  selection  :  (i)  No  necessary- 
relation  between  the  compositeness  and  complexity  of  consciousness  and 
its  dissolubility  :  indissoluble  compounds  in  the  physical  universe— (2) 
Relation  between  consciousnesses,  their  possible  fusion  in  a  superior  con- 
sciousness— Contemporary  psychology  and  the  religious  notion  of  the 
interpenetration  of  souls — Possible  evolution  of  memory  and  identification 
of  it  with  reality — Palingenesis  by  force  of  love — Problematic  character  of 
those  conceptions  and  of  every  conception  relative  to  existence,  of  con- 
sciousness and  the  relation  between  existence  and  consciousness — IV. 
Conception  of  death  appropriate  to  those  who,  in  the  present  state  of 
evolution,  do  not  believe  in  the  immortality  of  the  individual — Antique 
and  modern  stoicism — Acceptance  of  death  :  element  of  melancholy  and 
of  greatness  in  it — Expansion  of  self  by  means  of  philosophical  thought, 
and  scientific  disinterestedness,  to  the  point  of  to  some  extent  approving 
one's  own  annihilation,     ..........     477 


INTRODUCTION. 

I.  Sociality  the  basis  of  religion — Its  detinition. 

II.  The  connection  between  religion,  aesthetics,  and  morals. 

III.  The  inevitable  decomposition  of  all  systems  of  dogmatic 
religion  ;  the  state  of  "  non-religion  "  toward  which  the  human 
mind  seems  to  tend — The  e.xact  sense  in  which  one  must  un- 
derstand the  non-religion  as  distinguished  from  the  "  religion  of 
the  future." 

IV.  The  value  and  utility,  for  the  time  being,  of  religion  ;  its 
ultimate  insufficiency. 

I.  We  shall  meet,  in  the  course  of  this  work,  many  different 
definitions  that  have  at  one  time  or  another  been  given  to 
religion.  Some  were  assigned  from  the  point  of  view  of 
physics,  others  from  that  of  metaphysics,  others  from  that  of 
morals,  almost  none  from  that  of  sociology.  And  yet,  upon 
closer  scrutiny,  the  notion  of  a  social  bond  between  man  and 
the  powers  superior  to  him,  but  resembling  him,  is  precisely 
the  point  in  which  all  religious  conceptions  are  at  one.  Man 
becomes  truly  religious,  in  our  judgment,  only  when  above  the 
human  society  in  which  he  lives  he  superimposes  in  his 
scheme  of  the  world  another  society,  more  powerful  and 
more  cultured,  a  universal  and,  so  to  speak,  a  cosmic  society. 
The  sphere  of  sociality,  which  is  qne_of__the  characteri^ticajil. 
humanity,  must  be  enlarged  till  it  reaches  to  the  stars.  Soci- 
ality is  the  firm  foundation  of  the  religious  sentiment,  and 
a  religious  being  might  be  defined  as  a  being  disposed  to  be 
sociable,  not  only  with  all  living  creatures  with  whom  expe- 
rience makes  him  acquainted,  but  also  with  the  creatures  of 
thought  with  whom  he  peoples  the  world. 

That  religion  consists  essentially  in  the  establishment  of  a 

;  bond — at  first  mythical,  and   subsequently  mystic,  in  the  first 

instance   between   man   and  the   forces  of  the  universe,  then 

between    man    and    the    universe    itself,    and    ultimately    be- 


2  IN  TROD  UC  TION. 

tween  man  and  the  elements  of  the  universe — is  distinctly 
the  outcome  of  every  study  of  religion  ;  but  what  we  wish 
especially  here  to  consider  is  the  precise  way  in  which  this 
bond  has  been  conceived.  Well  (it  may  appear  more  clearly 
at  the  close  of  this  inquiry),  the  religious  bond  has  been  con- 
ceived ex  analogia  societatis  Imniancs :  the  relations,  amicable 
and  inimical,  of  men  to  each  other  were  employed  first  for 
the  explanation  of  physical  phenomena  and  natural  forces, 
then  for  the  metaphysical  explanation  of  the  world,  of  its 
creation,  conservation,  and  government ;  in  short,  sociological 
laws  were  universalized,  and  the  state  of  war  or  peace  which 
existed  among  men,  families,  tribes,  and  nations  was  conceived 
as  existing  also  among  the  volitions  vhich  were  fancied  to 
exist  beneath  or  beyond  the  forces  of  nature.  A^iiiythic  or 
mystic  sociology,  conceived  as  containing  the  secret  of  a  1 1 
things,  lies  at  the  basis  of  all  religions.  Religion  is  not 
sirnply  the^xpression  of  an  anthropomorphism — animals  and 
fantastic  beings  of  various  sorts  have  played  no  inconsiderable 
Irole  in  different  cults;  it  jsjinXmaginaJive  extension,  a  univer- 
sallzation  ofall  the  good  or. evil  relations  which  exist  among 
[conscious  beings,  of_war  and  peace,  friendship  and  enmity, 
'obedience  and  rebellion,  protection  and  authority,  submission, 
.fear,  respect,  devotion,  love :  religion  is  a  universal  socio- 
hnorpJiisni.  Social  relations  with  animals,  with  the  dead,  intel- 
lectual and  social  relations  with  good  and  evil  genii,  with  the 
forces  of  nature,  are  nothing  more  nor  less  than  various  forms 
of  this  universal  sociology  in  which  religion  has  sought  to  find 
the  reason  of  things — of  physical  phenomena  such  as  thunder, 
storm,  sickness,  death,  as  well  as  of  metaphysical  relations — 
the  origin  and  destiny  of  things,  and  of  moral  relations — vir- 
tue, vice,  law,  and  sanction. 

If,  therefore,  we  were  forced  to  condense  the  theory  of  this 
ibool<~into  a  single  definition,  we  should  say  That  religion 
iis  the  outcome  of  an  effort  to  explain  all  things — physical, 
imetaphysicaT,  and  rnoral^^^by  analogies  drawn  from  human 
'society,  imaginatively  and  symbolically  considered.  In  short 
it^TTa  universal  sociological  hypHQtliesi5>  mythical  in  form. 
~To  justify  this  conception  we  shall  review  the  various  defini- 


INTRODUCTION.  3 

tions  that  have  been  put  forth  of  the  religious  sentiment  ;  we 
shall  see  that  each  of  them  needs  completion  by  the  rest,  and 
that,  too,  from  the  sociological  point  of  view. 

The  definition  which  has  perhaps  been  most  widely  adopted 
of  late  years,  with  divers  modifications  by  Strauss,  by 
Pfleiderer,  by  Lotze,  and  by  M.  Reville,  is  that  of  Schleier- 
macher.  According  to  him,  the  essence  of  religion  consists  in 
the  feeling  that  we  all  have  of  our  own  absolute  dependence. 
The  powers  in  respect  to  which  this  dependence  is  felt  we  call 
divinities.  On  the  other  hand,  according  to  Feuerbach,  the 
origin,  nay  the  essence  even  of  religion  is  desire  :  if  man 
possessed  no  needs,  no  desires,  he  would  possess  no  gods.  If 
grief  and  evil  did  not  exist,  says  Hartmann  later  on,  there 
would  be  no  religion  ;  the  gods,  even  the  gods  of  history,  are 
no  more  than  the  powers  to  whom  man  looks  for  what  he  does 
not  possess,  and  wants,  to  whom  he  looks  for  relief,  for  salva- 
tion, for  happiness.  The  respective  definitions  of  Schleier- 
macher  and  Feuerbach,  taken  separately,  are  incomplete  ;  it  is 
at  least  necessary,  as  Strauss  suggests,  to  superpose  them. 
The  religious  sentiment  is  primarily,  no  doubt,  a  feeling  of 
dependence  ;  but  this  feeling  of  dependence,  really  to  give 
birth  to  religion,  must  provoke  in  one  a  reaction — a  desire  of 
deliverance.  To  feel  one's  own  weakness ;  to  be  conscious  of 
limitations  of  all  sorts  which  bound  one's  life,  and  then  to 
desire  to  augment  one's  power  over  one's  self  and  over  the 
material  universe;  to  enlarge  one's  sphere  of  action;  to  attain 
once  more  to  a  comparative  independence  in  face  of  the 
necessities  of  every  kind  which  hem  one  in — such  is  the  course 
of  the  human  mind  in  the  presence  of  the  universe. 

But  here  an  objection  occurs:  precisely  the  same  course 
seems  to  be  followed  by  the  mind  in  the  establishment  of 
science.  In  a  scientific  period  man  feels  himself  as  profoundly 
dependent  as  in  a  religious  period,  and  this  feeling  of  depend- 
ence is  accompanied  by  a  no  less  vivid  reaction  in  the  one 
case  than  in  the  other.  The  man  of  science  and  the  believer 
alike  aim  at  enfranchisement,  but  by  different  means.  Must 
one  be  content,  then,  with  an  external  and  negative  definition, 
and  say  with  M.  Darmesteter:  "  Religion  embraces  all  knowl- 


.  4  introduction: 

edge  and  all  power  not  scientific "  ? '  A  knowledge  not 
scientific  possesses  all  the  attributes  of  a  contradiction  in 
terms,  and,  as  for  a  power  not  scientific,  it  is  indispensable  to 
distinguish  it  in  some  positive  way  from  the  power  which  is 
afforded  us  by  science.  Well,  to  keep  close  to  the  facts, 
the  power  of  religion  is  that  which  we  frankly  do  not  possess, 
while  the  power  of  science  is  that  which  we  do  possess  and 
know  that  we  possess.  One  might  indeed  fall  back  on  the. 
distinction  between  belief  and  certainty  ;  but  the  man  of 
science  also  has  his  beliefs,  his  preferences  for  such  and  such 
a  cosmological  hypothesis,  which,  however,  is  not  a  religious 
belief,  properly  so  called.  Religious  and  moral  "  faith,"  as 
opposed  to  scientific  "  hypothesis,"  is  an  ultimate  and  very 
complete  manifestation  of  the  religious  sentiment,  which  we 
shall  examine  later,  though  it  carries  with  it  no  suggestion  of 
its  primitive  origin. 

From  the  sociological  point  of  view  the  distinction  is  plain. 
The  religious  sentiment  begins  at  the  point  where  mechanical 
determinism  seems  to  offer  an  opportunity  in  the  world  for  a 
sort  of  moral  and  social  reciprocity — a  possible  exchange  of 
sentiments  and  even  of  desires,  between  man  and  the  powers 
of  the  universe,  whatever  they  may  be.  That  point  once 
reached,  man  no  longer  conceives  it  possible  to  measure  the 
consequences  of  an  act — of  using  an  axe,  for  example,  on  a 
sacred  tree — in  the  exact  terms  of  mere  mechanical  reaction  ; 
for  over  and  above  the  simple  brute  fact  of  what  he  has  done, 
the  sentiment  or  intention  that  it  indicates  must  be  taken  into 
account  and  the  probable  effect  of  that  for  good  or  evil  upon 
the  gods.  Religious  sentiment  is  a  feeling  of  dependence,  on 
the  part  of  primitive  man,  in  respect  to  the  intelligences,  the 
'  volitions,  with  which  he  has  peopled  the  universe  and  which 
he  believes  capable  of  being  affected  agreeably  or  disagreeably 
by  his  conduct.  Religious  sentiment  is  not  a  feeling  of  mere 
physical  dependence  upon  the  universal  frame  of  things;  it  is 
more  than  ^11  a  physical  dependence,  a  moral,  and  in  especial,  a 
social  dependence.     This  relation  of  dependence  consists  really 

'  See  an  account  given  of  the  ProUgomhies  of  M.  Albert  Reville,  by   M.  Dar- 
mesteter,  Revue  philosophique,  seventh  year,  vol.  i.  p.  76. 


INTRODUCTION.  S 

of  two  reciprocal  terms:  if  man  is  bound  by  it  in  some  sort 
to  the  powers  of  nature,  they  in  turn  are  bound  by  it  to  man  ; 
man  has  more  or  less  of  a  hold  on  them,  he  can  offend  them 
morally,  just  he  might  offend  a  fellow-man.  If  man  is  in  the 
hand  of  the  gods,  he  can  in  a  measure  force  the  hand  to  open 
or  shut.  The  divanities  are  in  a  sense  dependent  also  on  man; 
they  experience,  as  the  result  of  his  conduct,  a  measure  of 
pleasure  or  of  pain.  It  is  only  later  that  this  idea  of  reciprocal 
dependence  becomes  metaphysical ;  it  reaches  its  ultimate 
development  in  the  concept  of  the  "  absolute,"  and  in  the 
sentiment  of  adoration  or  simple  "  respect." 

Besides  the  consciousness  of  dependence  and  the  correlative 
need  of  a  liberation  of  some  sort  from  it,  we  find  in  the 
religious  sentiment  the  expression  of  another  social  need  not 
less  important  ;  the  need  of  affection,  of  tenderness,  of  love. 
Our  sensibility,  developed  by  hereditary  instincts  of  sociality 
and  by  the  force  even  of  our  imagination  stretching  out 
beyond  the  limits  of  this  world,  instinctively  seeks  for  a  per- 
son, a  commanding  figure  to  lean  on,  to  confide  in.  When  we 
are  happy  we  need  to  bless  some  one  ;  when  we  are  wretched, 
we  need  some  one  to  complain  to,  to  groan  to,  even  to  curse. 
It  is  hard  to  resign  ourselves  to  the  belief  that  no  one  hears 
us,  that  no  one  a  long  way  off  sympathizes  with  us,  that  this 
swarming  universe  spins  in  the  void.  God  is  the  friend  with  us 
at  the  first  hour  and  at  the  last,  with  us  always  and  in  all 
places,  even  where  no  other  friend  can  follow,  even  in  death. 
To  whom  can  we  speak  of  those  we  have  loved  and  lost  ?  Of 
the  people  about  us,  some  hardly  remember  them,  others  did 
not  even  know  them  ;  but  in  this  divine  and  omnipresent 
Being  we  find  the  society,  which  is  constantly  broken  by 
death,  once  more  reunited  :  /;/  eo  vtviinns,  in  Him  we  cannot 
die.  From  this  point  of  view,  God,  the  object  of  the  religious 
sentiment,  no  longer  seems  a  guardian  and  master  simply. 
He  is  better  than  a  friend  ;  He  is  a  father:  in  the  beginning  a 
severe  father  and  all-powerful,  as  very  young  children  imagine 
their  fathers  to  be.  Children  readily  believe  that  their  father 
can  do  anything,  even  work  miracles :  a  word  from  him  and 
the  world  moves  :  fiat  lux,  and  the  day  is  born  ;  the  distinc- 


O  IXTRODUCTJON. 

tion  between  evil  and  good  lies  in  his  will  ;  disobedience  to 
him  naturally  involves  punishment.  They  judge  his  power  by 
their  weakness ;  and  so  the  primitive  race  of  man  felt  toward 
God.  But  later  a  superior  conception  arose;  as  man 
developed  he  developed  his  God,  endowed  him  with  a  more 
generous  list  of  moral  attributes  ;  and  this  God  is  ours.  We 
feel  the  need  of  a  smile  from  Him  after  a  sacrifice,  the  thought 
of  Him  sustains  us.  Woman  especially,  who  is  more  immature  , 
in  this  respect  than  man,  experiences  a  greater  need  of  a 
"  Father  in  heaven."  When  one  wishes  to  deprive  us  of  a  godA 
to  deliver  us  from  celestial  tutelage,  we  suddenly  find  ourselves^ 
orphans.  One  might  recognize  a  profound  truth  in  the  great 
symbol  of  Christ,  the  God,  dying  for  the  enfranchisement  of 
human  thought.  This  modern  version  of  the  "  passion  "  is 
enacted,  it  is  true,  only  in  the  heart,  but  it  is  none  the  less 
agonizing;  it  stirs  one's  indignation  none  the  less,  it  dwells  in 
one  like  the  image  of  a  father  who  is  dead.  One  cares  less  for 
the  promised  freedom  than  for  the  protection  and  affection 
that  are  gone.  Carlyle — whimsical,  unhappy  genius — could  eat 
no  bread  that  his  wife's  own  hands,  nay  his  wife's  own  heart, 
had  not  prepared ;  and  we  are  all  like  that ;  we  all  have  need 
of  daily  bread  kneaded  with  love  and  tenderness  ;  and  they 
that  have  no  loving  hand  from  which  to  look  for  it,  ask  it  of 
their  god,  of  their  ideal,  of  their  dream  ;  they  create  for  them- 
selves a  family  in  the  realm  of  imagination,  they  fill  out  the 
bosom  of  infinity  by  the  addition  of  a  heart. 

The  social  need  for  protection  and  love  was  evidently  not  ]v 
so  dominant  in  primitive  times.  The  tutelary  functions 
attributed  to  divinities  were  at  first  confined  to  the  more  or 
less  vulgar  accidents  of  this  life.  Later  they  were  more 
especially  directed  toward  one's  moral  emancipation  and 
extended  even  beyond  the  tomb.  Need  of  protection  and 
affection  leads  ultimately  to  considerations  on  the  destiny  of 
man  and  the  world  ;  and  thus  it  is  that  religion,  nearly  physical 
in  origin,  issues  in  systems  of  metaphysics. 

II.  This  book  is  intimately  related  to  two  others  that  we 
have  published  on  aesthetics  and  on  morals.     We  believe  that 


OF   THK         ^'  y 

INTRODUCriO^f.   IL  UNIVERSITY 

the  aesthetic  sentiment  is  identical  with  "self-conscious  life, 
with  life  that  is  conscious  of  its  own  subjective  intensity  and 
harmony  ;  beauty  we  have  saidmay  be^defiued  as  a  perception 
or  an  act  that  stimulates  hfe  simultaneously  on  its  three  sides — 
se^nsibilTty,  intcllifjence,  will — and  that  produces  pleasure  by 
the  immediate  ^con^dousness  of  this_^eneral  stinmlation. 
Moral  sentimejitj^on_jhe  other  hand^Js.  identical,  we  bcheve, 
with  a  consciousness  of  the  powers  and  possibilities  in  the 
sphere  of  practice  of  a  life  ideal  in  intensity  and  breadth  of 
interest.  The  bulk  of  these  possibilities  relates  to  one's  power, 
in  some  form  or  other,  of  serving  other  people.  Finally, 
religious  sentiment  appears  when  this  consciousness  of  the., 
social  aspect  of  life  js  extended  to  the  totality_of_conscious 
beings,  and  not  only  of  real  and  living,  but  also  of  possible 
and  ideal  beings.  It  is,  therefore,  in  the  very  notion  of  life, 
and  of  its  various  individual  or  social  manifestations,  that  the 
essential  unity  of  aesthetics  with  morals  and  religion  is  to  be 
found. 

In  the  first  part  of  this  work  we  shall  trace  the  origin  and 
evolution  of  sociological  mythology.  In  the  succeeding  por- 
tions we  shall  consider  whether,  if  we  once  set  aside  the 
mythical  or  imaginative  element  which  is  essential  to  religion 
and  which  distinguishes  it  from  philosophy,  the  sociological 
theory  does  not  offer  the  most  probable,  and  most  compre- 
hensive, metaphysical  explanation  of  the  universe." 

'  The  importance  which  Auguste  Comte  attributed  to  sociology  is  well  known, 
but  in  his  horror  of  metaphysics  the  founder  of  positivism  exchided  from  his 
science  everything  really  universal  and  cosmic  that  it  contained,  in  order  to  reduce 
it  to  limits  exclusively  human.  Messrs.  Spencer  and  Lilienfeld,  Schaeffle  and 
Espinas,  improving  on  the  sociology  of  Comte,  have  extended  social  laws  and  have 
shown  that  every  living  organism  is  an  embryonic  society,  and.t'zV^  versa,  that  every 
society  is  an  organism.  A  contemporary  philosopher  goes  still  further  and  attributes 
to  sociology  a  certain  metaphysical  significance.  M.  Alfred  Fouillee  says  :  "  Since 
biology  and  sociology  are  so  closely  related,  may  not  the  laws  that  are  common  to 
them  be  expected  to  suggest  still  more  universal  laws  of  nature  and  thought?  Is 
the  entire  universe  anything  more  than  a  vast  society  in  process  of  formation,  a 
vast  system  of  conscious  and  consciously  striving  atoms  which  is  working  itself 
out,  and  little  by  little  falling  into  shape  ?  The  laws  which  govern  the  group- 
ing of  individual  atoms  in  the  body  are,  no  doubt,  at  bottom  the  same  as  those 
that   govern    the   grouping  of    individuals  in  society  ;  and  the  very  atoms  them- 


8  IN  rjiOD  UC  TION. 

III.  It  is  important  that  there  should  be  no  misunderstand- 
ing in  regard  to  this  iion-religion  of  the  future,  as  contradistin- 
guished from  the  multitude  of  religions  of  the  future  that 
have  been  recently  expounded.  It  has  seemed  to  us  that 
these  various  expositions  are  based  on  a  number  of  equivoca- 
tions. In  the  first  place  religion,  properly  so-called,  has  some- 
times been  confused  with  metaphysics,  sometimes  with  morals, 
sometimes  with  both  ;  and  it  is  owing  to  this  confusion  that 
religion  has  been  conceived  to  be  indestructible.  Is  it  not 
by  an  abuse  of  language  that  Mr.  Spencer,  for  example,  gives 
the  name  of  religion  to  speculations  concerning  the  unknow- 
able and  thence  readily  deduces  the  conclusion  that  religion, 
by  which  he  means  metaphysics,  possesses  an  impregnable 
stronghold  in  the  human  mind  ?  In  the  same  way  many 
other  contemporary  philosophers,  like  Herr  von  Hartmann, 
the   theologian    of   the  unconscious,   have    not    resisted    the 

selves,  which  are  supposed  to  be  indivisible,  are,  it  may  be,  diminutive  societies. 
If  so,  social  science,  the  crown  of  human  sciences,  may  some  day  give  us,  in  its  ulti- 
mate formula,  the  secret  of  universal  life.  .  .  It  is  conceivable  that  the  universal 
type  of  existence  of  the  world  may  be  found  in  sociology — that  the  universe  may- 
come  to  be  conceived  as  a  society  in  process  of  formation  ;  miscarrying  here  and 
succeeding  there,  in  its  effort  to  transmute  the  reign  of  mechanics  into  a  reign  of 
justice,  and  to  substitute  fraternity  for  antagonism.  If  so,  the  essential  and 
immanent  power  at  the  heart  of  beings,  always  ready  to  manifest  itself  as  soon  as 
circumstances  give  it  access  to  the  light  of  consciousness,  might  be  expressed  by 
the  single  word,  sociability."  (Alfred  Fouillee,  La  Science  sociale  conteiiiporaine, 
2d  edition,  introduction  and  conclusion.)  M.  Fouillee  has  not  applied  this 
theory  to  religion  ;  he  has  noted  its  suggestiveness  in  the  domain  of  metaphysics 
and  of  ethics  simply;  we  believe,  and  we  shall  endeavour  to  show,  that  it  is  not  less 
suggestive  in  the  domain  of  religion. 

This  book  was  finished,  and  in  part  printed,  when  there  appeared  in  the  Revue 
philospphique  M.  Lesbazeilles'  interesting  article  on  Les  bases  psychologiques  de  la 
religion. 

Although  the  author's  point  of  view,  as  the  title  indicates,  is  throughout  strictly- 
psychological,  he  has  given  his  attention  also  to  social  relations  and  "  conditions  of 
collective  adaptation,"  which  he  regards  as  prefigured,  anticipated,  and  sanctified  by 
religious  rites  and  myths.  This,  we  think,  implies  some  confusion  between  religion 
and  morality.  ^Morality  deals  with  collective  human  life,  but  religion  deals  with 
collective  life  generally,  and  undertakes  at  the  same  time  to  provide  a  physical 
and  a  metaphysical  explanation  of  things.  We  shall  see  that  in  the  beginning 
religion  was  a  superstitious  physics,  in  which  the  forces  of  nature  were  regarded 
simply  as  the  expression  of  some  unknown  person  or  person's  volitions,  and  that  it 
thus  naturally  assumed  a  sociological  form. 


INTRODUCTION.  9 

temptation  of  describing  for  us  a  religion  of  the  future, 
which  resolves  itself  simply  into  their  own  system,  whatever 
it  may  be,  of  philosophy.  Others  again,  especially  among 
liberal  Protestants,  preserve  the  name  of  religion  for  purely 
rationalistic  systems  of  thought.  There  is,  of  course,  a  sense 
in  which  one  may  admit  that  metaphysics  and  morals  con- 
stitute a  religion,  or  form  at  least  the  vanishing  point  toward 
which  religion  tends.  But,  in  many  books,  the  "  religion  of 
the  future"  is  no  more  than  a  somewhat  hypocritical  com- 
promise with  some  form  of  positive  religion.  Under  cover 
of  the  symbolism  dear  to  the  Germans,  they  save  in  appear- 
ance what  they  in  reality  destroy.  It  is  in  opposition  to 
this  species  of  subterfuge  that  we  have  adopted  the  less 
misleading  term  of  the  "  Non-religion  of  the  Future."  Thus 
we  separate  ourselves  from  Voii  Hartmann  and  the  othejr_ 
prophets  who  reveal  to  us,  point  by  point,  the  religion  of  the 
fiftieth  century.  Wh^n  one  approaches  an  object  of  such 
ardent  controversy  it  is  better  to  employ  words  with  exactness. 
Everything,  first  and  last,  has  been  included  within  the  limits 
of  philosophy;  even  the  sciences,  on  the  pretext  that  all 
scientific  researches  were  in  the  beginning  undertaken  by 
philosophy;  and  philosophy,  in  turn,  has  been  included  in 
religion,  on  the  pretext  that  originally  religion  embraced 
within  its  limits  the  whole  of  philosophy  and  of  sciei]ce. 
Given  a  religion  of  some  kind,  even  that  of  the  Fuegians, 
there  is  nothing  to  prevent  one  from  reading  into  its  myths 
the  last  dictum  of  modern  metaphysics ;  by  this  means  a 
religion  may  apparently  continue  in  existence  until  there  is  no 
more  left  of  it  than  a  mere  envelope  of  religious  phraseology 
covering  and  discovering  a  wholly  metaphysical  and  purely 
philosophical  system.  Better  still,  on  this  method,  since 
Christianity  is  the  highest  form  of  religion,  all  philosophers 
must  ultimately  become  Christians ;  and  finally,  since  univer- 
sality and  catholicity  are  the  ideal  of  Christianity,  we  shall  all 
be  Catholics  before  we  are  aware  of  it. 

For  the  investigator  who,  without  denying  such  analogies  as 
may  ultimately  be  found  to  exist,  proposes  to  take  as  his  point 
of  departure  the  specific  differences  of  religion  (which  is  the 


I O  IN  TROD  UC  TION. 

true  mctho^d),  every  positive  and  historical  religion  presents 
three  distinctive  and  essential  elements:  (i)  An  attempt  at  a 
mythical  and  non-scientihc  explanation  of  natural  phenomena 
(divine  intervention,  miracles,  efficacious  prayers,  etc.),  or  of 
historical  facts  (incarnation  of  Jesus  Christ  or  of  Buddha, 
revelations,  and  so  forth) ;  (2)  A  system  of  dogmas,  that  is  to 
say,  of  symbolic  ideas,  of  imaginative  beliefs,  forcibly  imposed 
upon  one's  faith  as  absolute  verities,  even  though  they  are 
susceptible  of  no  scientific  demonstration  or  philosophical  justi- 
fication ;  (3)  A  cult  and  a  system  of  rites,  that  is  to  say,  of 
more  or  less  immutable  practices  regarded  as  possessing  a 
marvellous  efficacy  upon  the  course  of  things,  a  propitiatory 
virtue.  A  religion  without  myth,  without  dogma,  without 
cult,  without  rite  is  no  more  than  that  somewhat  Igastard  prod- 
uct, "  natural  religion,"  which  is  resolvable  into  a  "system  of 
metaphysical  hypotheses.  By  these  three  different,  and  really 
organic  elements,  religion  is  clearly  marked  off  from  philosophy. 

"^     Also,  instead  of  being  nowadays  what  it  was  at  a  former  period, 
a  popular  philosophy  and  popular  science,  mythical  and  dog- 

'matic  religion  tends  to  become  a  system  of  antiscientific  and 

antiphilosophical  ideas.  If  this  character  is  not  always 
apparent,  it  is  owing  to  the  sort  of  symbolism  of  which  we 
have  spoken,  which  preserves  the  name  and  abandons  the  ideas 
or  adapts  them  to  the  progress  of  the  modern  mind. 

The  elements  which  distinguish  religion  from  metaphysics 
or  from  ethics,  and  which  constitutes  a  positive  religion 
properly  so-called,  are,  in  our  judgment,  essentially  caducous 
and  transitory,  and,  if  so,  \ve  reject  the  religion  of  the  future', 
as  we  should  reject  an  alchemy  of  the  future,  or  astrology  of 
the  future.  But  it  does  not  follow  that  non-religion  ora-religion 
— which  is  simply  the  negation  of  all  dogma,  ofall  traditional 
and" supernatural  authority,  of  all  revelation,  of  all  miracle,  of 

U'  all  myth,  of  all  rite  erected  into  a  duty — is  synonymous  with 
impiety,  with  a  contempt  for  the  moral  and  metaphysical  ele- 
ments of  ancient  faiths.  Not  in  the  least ;  to  be  non-religious 
or  ai-religious  is  not  to  be  anti-religious.  More  than  that,  as 
we  shall  see,  the  non-religion  of  the  future  may  well  preserve  all 
that  is  pure  in  the  religious  sentiment:    an  admirat^bnjor  the 


IN  TROD  UCriON.  1 1 

cosmos  and  for  the  infinite  powers  which  are  there  displayed  ; 
a  search  for  an  ideal  not  only  individual,  but  social,  and  even 
cosmic,  which  shall  overpass  the  limits  of  actual  reality.  As 
it~  rhay  be  maintained  that  modern  chemistry  is  a  veritable 
alchemy — but  an  alchemy  shorn  of  the  presuppositions  which 
caused  its  miscarriage — as  modern  contemporary  chemists 
may  pronounce  a  sincere  eulogium  upon  the  ancient  alchemists 
and  their  marvellous  intuitions;  just  so  it  may  be  afifirmed 
that  the  true  religion,  if  the  word  must  be  preserved,  consists 
in  no  longer  maintaining  a  narrow  and  superstitious  religion. 
The  absence  of  positive  and  dogmatic  religion  is,  moreover,  the 
very  form  toward  which  all  particular  religions  tend.  In  effect 
they  strip  themselves,  little  by  little  (except  Catholicism  and 
Turkish  Mohammedanism),  of  their  sacred  character,  of  their 
antiscientific  affirmations;  they  renounce  the  oppressive  con- 
trol that  they  have  traditionally  exercised  over  the  individual 
conscience.  The  developments  of  religion  and  those  of  civili- 
zation have  always  proceeded  hand  in  hand  ;  the  develop- 
ments of  religion  have  always  proceeded  in  the  line  of  a 
greater  independence  of  spirit,  of  a  less  literal  and  less  narrow 
dogmatism,  of  a   freer  speculation.     Non-religion,  as  we  here 


understand  it,  may  be  considered  as  a  higheFdegree"  simply  of   1    ' 
religion  and  of  civihzation. 

The  absence  of  religion  thus  conceived  is  one  with  a 
reasoned  but  hypotlietical  metaphyslcs7  treating  of  rnen  and 
the  universe.  One  may  designate  it  as  religious  independence, 
or  anomy,  or  individualism.'  It  has,  moreover,  been  preached 
in  some  degree  by  all  religious  reformers  from  Sakia-Mouni 
and  Jesus  to  Luther  and  Calvin,  for  they  have  all  of  them 
maintained  liberty  of  conscience  and  respected  so  much  only 
of  tradition  as,  in  the  then  state  of  contemporary  religious 
criticism,  they  could  not  help  admitting.  Catholicism,  for 
example,  was  founded  in  part  by  Jesus,  but  also  in  part  in 
spite  of  Jesus  ;  intolerant  Anglicanism  was  founded  in  part  by 
Luther,  but  also  in  part  in  spite  of  Luther.  The  non-religious 
man,  the  man  simply  without  a  religion,  may  therefore  admire 
ard  sympathize  with  the  great  founders  of  religion,  not  only 
in   that    they    were    thinkers,   metaphysicians,  moralists,   and 

'  See  pt.  3,  chap.  ii. 


1 2  n\f  TROD  UC  TION. 

philanthropists,  but  in  that  they  were  reformers  of  established 
belief,  more  or  less  avowed  enemies  of  religious  authority,  of 
every  afifirmation  which  should  be  that  of  a  sacred  body  and 
not  of  an  individual.  Every  positive  religion  possesses  as  one 
of  its  essential  characters  that  of  transmitting  itself  from  one 
generation  to  another,  by  virtue  of  the  authority  which 
attaches  to  domestic  or  national  traditions  ;  its  mode  of  trans- 
mission is  thus  totally  different  from  that  of  science  and  of. 
art.  New  religions  themselves  are  obliged  more  often  than 
not  to  present  themselves  in  the  guise  of  simple  reforms,  in 
the  guise  of  simple  returns  to  the  rigour  of  former  teaching 
and  precept,  to  avoid  giving  too  great  a  shock  to  the  principle 
of  authority,  but  in  spite  of  these  disguises  every  new  religion 
has  shaken  it ;  the  return  to  an  alleged  primitive  authority 
has  always  been  a  real  outleap  in  the  direction  of  ultimate 
liberty.  There  exists,  then,  in  the  bosom  of  every  great 
religion  a  dissolving  force  ;  namely,  the  veryjorce  whicliserved 
in  the  beginning  to  constitute  it  aiid  to  enable  it  to  triumph 
over  its  predecessor  :  the  right  of  private  judgment.  It  is 
upon  this  force,  this  right,  that  one  may  count  for  tlie  ultimate 
establishment,  after  the  gradual  decomposition  of  every  system 
of  dogmatic  belief,  of  a  final  absence  of  religion.' 

Over  and  above  the  confusion  between  the  perpetuity  of 
metaphysics  and  morals  and  that  of  positive  religion,  there  is 
another  tendency  among  our  contemporaries  against  which  we 
have  wished  to  protest.  It  is  the  belief,  which  many  profess, 
in  the  final  unification  of  existing  religions  into  a  religion  of 
the  future,  either  a  perfected  Judaism,  or  a  perfected  Chris- 
tianity, or  a  perfected  Buddhism.  To  this  predicted  religious 
unity  we  oppose  rather  a  future  pluraTity" of  beliefs,  a  religious 
i n dividualTsm.  "  A  pretension  to  universahty  is,  no  doubt, 
cHaracteristic  oF"every  great  religion ;  but  the  dogmatic  and 
mythological  element  which  constitutes  a  religion  positive  is 
. pl^cisely  irreconcilable,  even  under  the  elastic  form  of  syn- 
bolism,  with  the  very  universality  to  which  they  aspire.  Such 
a  universality  cannot  be  realized  even  in  metaphysics  ai  d 
morals,  for  the  element  of  insolubility  and  unknowabilily, 
which  cannot  be  eliminated,  will  always  attract  different  minis 

'  See  pt.  3,  chap.  i. 


IN  TR  ODUC  TIO.V.  I J 

in  different  directions.  The  notion  of  a  dogma  actually- 
catholic,  that  is  universal,  or  even  a  belief  actually  catholic, 
seems  to  us  a  belief  contrary  to  the  indefinite  progress  for 
which  each  of  us  ought  to  work  according  to  his  strength  and 
his  opportunities.  A  thought  is  not  really  personal,  does  not^ 
properly  speaking,  even  exist  or  possess  the  right  to  exist, 
unless  it  be  something  more  than  a  mere  repetition  of  the 
thoughts  of  somebody  else.  Every  eye  must  have  its  own  . 
point  of  view,  every  voice  its  own  accent.  The  very  progress  ■ 
of  intelligence  and  of  conscience  must,  like  all  progress,  pro- 
ceed from  the  homogeneous  to  the  heterogeneous,  nor  seek  for 
an  ideal  unity  except  in  an  increasing  variety.  Would  one 
recognize  the  absolute  power  of  the  savage  chief  or  the  Oriental 
monarch  in  the  federative  republican  government,  which,  after 
a  certain  number  of  centuries,  will  probably  be  that  of  all 
civilized  nations?  No;  and  yet  humanity  will  have  passed 
from  the  one  to  the  other  by  a  series  of  gradations  sometimes 
scarcely  visible.  We  believe  that  humanity  will  progress  in 
the  same  way  generally,  from  dogmatic  religion  with  preten- 
sions to  universality,  catholicity,  and  monarchy — of  which  the 
most  curious  type  has  precisely  been  achieved  in  our  days 
with  the  dogma  of  infallibility — toward  that  state  of  indi- 
vidualism and  religions,  which  we  consider  as  the  human 
ideal,  and  which,  moreover,  does  not  in  the  least  exclude  the 
I  possibility  of  diverse  religious  associations  or  federations,  nor 
jt  of  free  and  continuous  progress  toward  ultimate  unity  of 
f    belief  on  the  most  general  subjects  of  human  inquiry. 

The  day  when  positive  religions  shall  have  disappeared,  the 
;  spirit  of  curiosity  in  matters  of  cosmology  and  metaphysics, 
which  has  been  more  or  less  paralyzed  by  an  effort  to  dwell 
within  the  unyielding  limits  of  indomitable  formula,  will  be 
more  vivacious  than  ever  before.  There  will  be  less  of  faith, 
but  more  of  free  speculation  ;  less  of  contemplation,  but  more 
of    reasoning,^  of    hardy    induction,   of    an    active    outlcap    of 


thought ;  the  religious  dogma  will  be  extinct,  but  the  best  ele- 
ments  of  religious  life  will  be  propagated,  will  be  augmejited 
in  intensity  and    extent.^ For  he  alone   is  religious,  in   thg 


14  INTRODUCTION. 

philosophical  sense  of  the  word,  who  searches  for,  who  thinks 
about,  who  loves  the  truth.  Christ  might  have  said:  I  came 
not"  to  bring  peace  into  human  thought,  but  an  incessant  battle 
of   ideas;  not  repose,  but  movement   and   progress  of  spirit ; 

I  not  universal  dogma,  but  liberty  of  belief,  which  is  the  first 

Vcondition  of  growth.' 

IV.  To-day,  when  the  very  value  of  religion  is  increasingly 
called  in  doubt,  it  has  been  defended  by  sceptics,  who  support 
it,  sometimes  in  the  name  of  the  poetry  and  beauty  of 
religious  legend,  sometimes  in  the  name  of  its  practical  utility. 
There  is  sometimes  a  reaction  in  the  modern  mind  toward 
fiction  and  away  from  the  reality.  The  human  mind  becomes 
weary  of  regarding  itself  as  a  too  passively  clear  mirror  in 
which  the  world  throws  its  image  ;  and  takes  pleasure  in 
breathing  on  the  glass  and  obscuring  it ;  and  thence  it  comes 
that  certain  refined  philosophers  raise  the  question  whether 
truth  and  clearness  are  advantageous  in  art,  in  science,  in 
morals,  in  religion ;  and  they  go  the  length  even  of  preferring 
religious  or  philosophical  error  on  aesthetic  grounds.  For  our 
part,  we  are  far  from  antagonizing  poetry,  and  believe  it  to  be 
excessively  beneficial  for  humanity,  but  on  condition  that  it  be 
not  the  dupe  of  its  own  symbols  and  do  not  erect  its  inten- 
tions into  dogmas.  At  this  price,  we  believe  that  poetry  may 
very  often  be  truer,  and  better,  than  certain  too  narrow^ly 
scientific,  or  too  narrowly  practical  truths.  We  shall  not  take 
ourselves  to  task  for  having  frequently,  in  this  book,  mingled 
poetry  and  metaphysics.  In  so  doing  we  preserve,  in  so  far  as 
it  is  legitimate,  one  of  the  aspects  of  every  religion,  its  poetic 
symbolism.  Poetry  is  often  more  philosophic,  not  only  than 
history,  but  than  abstract  philosophy,  but  on  condition  of 
being  sincere  and  of  making  no  pretensions  to  being  what  it  is 
not. 

But  the  partisans  of  "  beneficent  error  "  will  object :  Why 
endeavour  to  dissipate  poetic  illusion  and  to  call  things  by 
their  names  ?  Are  there  not  for  peoples,  for  men,  for  children, 
certain  useful  errors  and  permissible  illusions?  '    Surely  a  great 

•See  pt.  3,  chaps,  i.  and  ii.  'See  pt.  2,  chap.  iv. 


IN  TROD  UCriON.  1 5 

number  of  errors  may  be  considered  as  having  been  necessary 
in  the  history  of  humanity  ;  but  has  not  progress  precisely 
consisted  in  restricting  the  number  of  these  useful  errors? 
There  have  been  also  organs  in  the  body  which  have  become 
superfluous,  and  have  disappeared  or  been  fundamentally 
transformed  ;  such,  for  example,  are  the  muscles  which,  no 
doubt,  served  our  ancestors  to  move  their  ears.  There  exist 
evidently  also,  in  the  human  mind,  instincts,  sentiments,  and 
beliefs  which  have  already  atrophied  and  are  destined  to  disap- 
pear or  to  be  transformed.  To  show  the  deep  roots  that 
religion  has  sent  down  into  the  depths  of  the  human  mind  is 
not  to  demonstrate  the  perpetuity  of  religion,  for  the  human 
mind  itself  is  incessantly  changing.  "Our  fathers,"  said  Fon- 
tenelle,  "  made  the  mistake  of  hoarding  up  their  errors  for  our 
benefit";  and  in  effect,  before  arriving  at  the  truth,  a  certain 
number  of  false  hypotheses  must  be  tried  ;  to  discover  the 
true  is  in  some  seiise  to  have  exhausted  the  possibilities  of 
the  false.  Religions  have  rendered  the  human  mind  this  im- 
mense service,  they  have  exhausted  a  whole  class  of  side- 
issues  in  science,  metaphysics,  and  ethics  ;  one  must  cross  the 
marvellous  to  attain  the  natural,  one  must  cross  direct  revela- 
tion and  mystical  intention  to  attain  to  rational  induction 
and  deduction.  All  the  fantastic  and  apocalyptical  ideas  with 
which  religion  has  peopled  the  human  mind  once  possessed 
their  utility,  just  as  the  incomplete  and  often  grotesque 
sketches  with  which  the  studio  of  the  artist  is  filled  once 
possessed  theirs.  This  straying  of  the  human  mind  was  a  sort 
of  reconnoitering,  this  play  of  imagination  was  a  veritable 
labour,  a  preliminary  labour  ;  but  the  products  of  it  must  not 
be  presented  as  final.  The  false  and  even  the  absurd  have 
always  played  so  great  a  role  in  human  affairs  that  it  would 
assuredly  be  dangerous  to  attempt  abruptly  to  proceed  with- 
out them  ;  transitions  are  useful,  even  in  passing  from  dark- 
ness into  light,  and  one  needs  to  become  accustomed  even  to 
the  truth.  It  is  for  that  reason  that  society  has  always  rested 
in  a  great  measure  upon  error.  To-day  this  portion  of  its 
foundation  is  being  withdrawn,  and  conservatives  are  sadly 
frightened   lest    the    whole  social  equilibrium  be  destroyed ; 


1 6  IN  TROD  UCriON. 

but  we  repeat,  this  diminution  of  the  number  of  errors  is  pre- 
cisely what  constitutes  progress,  and  in  some  ^ort  defines  it. 
Progress  in  effect  is  not  simply  a  sensible  amelioration  of  life, 
it  is  also  the  achievement  of  a  better  intellectual  formulation 
of  life,  it  is  "a  triumph  of  logic  ;  to  progress  is  to  attain  to 
a  more  complete  consciousness  of  one's  self  and  of  the  world, 
and  by  that  very  fact  to  a  more  complete  inner  consistency  of 
one's  theory  of  the  world.  In  the  beginning,  not  only  moral 
and  religious  life,  but  civil  and  political  life,  rested  upon  the 
grossest  errors,  on  absolute  monarchy,  divine  right,  caste,  and 
slavery  ;  all  this  barbarity  possessed  a  certain  utility,  but  its 
utility  precisely  consisted  in  its  leading  to  its  own  extinction  ; 
it  served  as  a  means  of  handing  us  on  to  something  better. 
What  distinguishes  the  living  mechanism  from  other  mechan- 
isms is  that  the  outer  springs  precisely  labour  to  cause  them- 
selves to  be  superseded  ;  that  the  movement  once  produced  is 
perpetual.  If  we  possessed  means  of  projection  powerful 
enough  to  rival  those  of  nature,  we  might  convert  a  cannon 
ball  into  an  eternal  satellite  of  the  earth,  without  its  being  neces- 
sary to  impart  movement  to  it  a  second  time.  A  result 
accomplished  in  nature  is  accomplished  once  for  all.  A  step 
forward  if  it  is  real  and  not  illusory,  and  in  especial  if  it  is 
completely  conscious,  renders  impossible  a  step  backward. 

In  the  eighteenth  century  the  attack  on  religion  was  directed 
by  philosophical"  partisans "'df~7r7'?/^rz  principles,  who  were 
persuaded  that  the  instant  a  faith  was  proved  to  Taeabsurd 
that  was  the  end  of  it.  In  our  days  the  attack  isTed  by 
historians  who  possess  an  absolute  respect  for  fact,  which 
they  are  inclined  to  erect  into  a  law,  historians  who  pass  a 
learned  existence  in  the  midst  of  absurdity  in  all  its  forms, 
and  for  whom  the  irrational,  instead  of  condemning  a  belief 
in  which  it  appears,  is  often  a  condition  of  its  duration. 
Therein  lies  the  difference  between  the  attitude  of  the 
eighteenth  century  and  that  of  the  nineteenth  toward  religion. 
The  eighteenth  century  hated  religion  and  wished  jtojdestroy 
it.  The  nineteenth  century  endeavours  to  understand  religion 
and  cannot  reconcile  itself  to  seeing  so  charming  an  object  of 
study  disappear.     The  historian's  device  is,  "  What  has  been. 


INTRODUCTION.  1 7 

will  be  ";  he  is  naturally  inclined  to  model  his  conception  of 
the  future  on  his  knowledge  of  the  past.  A  witness  of  the 
futility  of  revolutions,  he  sometimes  forgets  that  complete 
evolution  is  possible:  an  evolution  which  transforms  things  to 
their  very  roots  and  metamorphoses  human  beings  and  their 
beliefs  to  an  extent  that  renders  them   unrecognizable.' 

One  of  the  masters  of  religious  criticism,  M.  Renan,  wrote 
to  Sainte-Beuve :  "  No,  assuredly  I  did  not  wish  to  detach 
from  the  old  trunk  a  soul  which  was  not  ripe."  We,  also,  are 
not  of  those  who  believe  in  shaking  the  tree  and  gathering  a 
green  and  bruised  crop  ;  but  if  one  ought  not  to  make  the 
green  fruit  fall,  one  may  at  least  take  means  to  hasten  its 
ripening  upon  the  branch.  The  human  brain  is  a  transmuta- 
tion of  solar  heat ;  one  must  dissipate  this  heat,  to  become 
once  more  a  ray  of  the  sun.  Such  an  ambition  is  very  gentle, 
is  not  at  all  exorbitant,  when  one  remembers  how  small  a 
thing  a  ray  of  the  sun  is  and  how  lost  in  infinite  space  ;  a 
relatively  small  portion  of  these  wandering  rays,  however,  has 
sufificed  to  fashion  the  earth  and  all  mankind. 

I  often  meet,  near  my  home,  a  missionary  with  a  black  beard, 
a  hard,  sharp    eye,  lit  sometimes  by  a  mystic    gleam.      He 

'  "  You  are  occupied  with  religion,"  a  cultivated  unbeliever  writes  me.  "  There 
is  then'sonie  sucfTtTiing  !  So  mifch  the  better  for  those  who  cannot  do  without  it  J' 
This  witticism  precisely  sums  up  the  state  of  mind  of  a  great  man^enljghtengd[_ 
Frenchmen  :  they  are  profoundly  astonished  that  religion  should  still  be  on  its  legs, 
and  out  of  their  astonishment  they  draw  the  conviction  that  it  is  necessary.  Their 
surprise  thereupon  becomes  a  respect,  almost  a  reverence.  Assuredly  positive 
religions  still  exist  and  long  will  exist  ;  and  as  long  as  they  exist  they  will  no  doubt 
do  so  for  reasons  ;  but  these  reasons  diminish  day  by  day  and  the  number  of 
believers  diminishes  along  with  them.  Instead  of  bowing  down  before  the  fact  as 
before  something  sacred,  one  must  rather  say  to  one's  self  that  by  modifying  the 
fact  one  will  modify  and  suppress  the  raisoits  d'etre  of  that  fact  ;  by  driving 
religions  before  it,  the  modern  mind  demonstrates  that  they  have  less  and  less  the 
right  to  live.  That  certain  people  have  not  as  yet  learned  to  do  without  them  is 
true,  and  as  long  as  they  do  not  learn  to  do  without  them  religions  will  for  them 
exist  ;  we  have  not  the  least  anxiety  on  that  score  ;  and  just  in  so  far  as  they  find 
their  certitude  in  regard  to  them  shaken,  they  will  have  proved  that  their  intelli- 
gence is  so  far  enfranchised  as  to  have  no  further  need  of  an  arbitrary  rule. 
Similarly  for  peoples  :  nothing  is  more  naive  than  to  urge  the  very  necessity  of 
transitions  as  a  bar  to  progress  :  it  is  as  if  one  should  call  attention  to  the  short- 
ness of  human  steps,  and  conclude  therefrom  that  movement  is  impossible  ;  that  man 
stands  still  like  a  shell-fish  attached  to  a  stone  or  a  fossil  buried  in  a  rock. 


1 8  INTROD  UCTION. 

seems  to  maintain  a  correspondence  with  the  four  corners  of 
the  world  ;  assuredly  he  works  and  works  precisely  at  building 
up  what  I  am  endeavouring  to  pull  down.  And  must  our 
opposite  strivings  therefore  be  regarded  as  hostile?  Why 
so  ?  Are  we  not  both  brothers  and  humble  collaborators  in 
the  work  of  humanity?  To  convert  primitive  peoples  to 
Christian  dogma  and  to  deliver  those  who  have  arrived  at  a 
higher  stage  of  civilization  from  a  positive  and  dogmatic 
,  faith,  are  two  tasks  which,  far  from  excluding  each  other,  com- 
'  plete  each  other.  Missionaries  and  freethinkers  cultivate 
different  plants,  in  different  places,  but  at  bottom  both  are 
labouring  to  make  the  field  of  humanity  more  fertile.  It  is  said 
that  John  Huss,  when  tied  to  the  stake  at  Constance,  wore  a 
smile  of  supreme  joy  when  he  perceived  a  peasant  in  the 
crowd,  bringing  straw  from  the  roof  of  his  hut  to  light  the 
fire:  Sancta  sunplicitas  !  The  martyr  recognized  in  this  man 
a  brother  in  sincerity  ;  he  was  glad  to  find  himself  in  the 
presence  of  a  disinterested  conviction.  We  are  no  longer  in 
the  times  of  John  Huss,  of  Bruno,  of  Servetius,  of  St.  Justin, 
or  of  Socrates ;  it  constitutes  a  reason  the  more  for  showing 
ourselves  tolerant,  and  sympathetic  even,  toward  those  whom 
we  regard  as  being  in  error,  provided  that  the  error  be  sincere. 
There  is  an  anti-religious  fanaticism  which  is  almost  as 
danger'oaT; — ar'  reTiglous  fanaticism^  Erasmus  compares 
humanity  to  a  druhl<en  man  seated  on  a  horse  and  lurching 
first  to  the  right  and  then  to  the  left.  The  enemies  of  religion 
have  often  committed  the  mistake  of  despising  their  adver- 
versaries ;  it  is  the  worst  of  faults.  There  is  a  power  of 
elasticity  in  human  beliefs  which  causes  their  resistance  to 
increase  in  proportion  to  the  compression  which  is  exerted 
upon  them.  Formerly,  when  a  city  was  attacked  by  some 
scourge,  the  first  care  of  the  notable  inhabitants,  of  the  chiefs 
of  the  city,  was  to  order  public  prayers  ;  to-day  the  practical 
means  of  battling  with  epidemics  and  other  scourges  are  bet- 
ter known,  but  nevertheless,  in  1885,  when  there  was  cholera 
in  Marseilles  the  municipal  council  devotedTt?  attention  almost 
singly  to  removing  the  religious  mottoes  from  the  walls  of  the 
piTBiic  schools ;  it  is  a  remarkable  exam ple^or~what'  one  may 


INTRODUCTION.  1 9 

call  a  counter-superstition.  Thus  the  two  species  of  fanaticism, 
religious  and  anti-religious,  may  equally  distract  the  timid 
from  the  employment  of  scientific  means  against  natural  evils; 
an  employment  which  is  after  all,  par  excellence,  the  business 
of  man  ;  these  two  kinds  of  fanaticism  are  paralyso-motors  in 
the  great  body  of  humanity. 

Among  cultivated  people  there  has  now  and  then  taken 
place  a  violent  reaction  against  religious  prejudice,  and  this 
reaction  frequently  persists  till  death  ;  but  in  a  certain  number 
of  cases  this  reaction  is  followed  in  the  course  of  time  by  a 
counter-reaction  ;  it  is  only,  as  Spencer  has  remarked,  when 
this  counter-reaction  has  been  sufficient,  that  one  may  formu- 
late, with  anything  like  completeness,  judgments  somewhat 
less  narrow  and  more  comprehensive  upon  the  question  of 
religion.  Time  makes  us  generous,  enlarges  our  minds  each 
year,  as  it  does  the  concentric  circles  in  the  trunk  of  a  tree. 
Life  also  pacifies  us  as  death  does ;  reconciles  us  with  those 
who  do  not  think  and  feel  as  we  do.  When  you  become 
indignant  at  some  antique,  absurd  prejudice,  remember  that  it 
has  been  a  travelling  companion  of  humanity  for  perhaps 
ten  thousand  years,  that  it  has  lent  men  aid  when  the  ways 
were  bad  and  has  been  the  occasion  of  many  joys,  and  has 
lived,  so  to  speak,  the  life  of  humanity  ;  one  might  well  find 
a  certain  element  of  fraternity  in  every  human  thought. 

We  do  not  believe  that  the  readers  of  this  sincere  book  will 
be  able  to  accuse  us  of  partiality  or  of  injustice,  for  we  have 
not  sought  to  disguise  either  the  good  or  the  evil  aspects  of 
religion,  and  have  even  taken  a  certain  pleasure  in  setting  the 
former  in  relief.  On  the  other  hand,  we  shall  hardly  be  taxed 
with  ignorance  of  the  religious  problem  which  we  have 
patiently  studied  on  its  every  side.  We  shall  perhaps  be 
reproached  with  belonging  something  too  manifestly  to  the 
country  of  our  birth,  with  introducing  into  the  solutions  here 
offered  something  of  the  French  excess  of  logic,  of  an  indispo- 
sition to  yield  to  half  measures,  of  the  determination  to  have 
all  or  nothing,  of  the  spirit  which  was  unable  to  stop  midway 
with  Protestantism  and  which  for  the  past  two  centuries  has 
been  the  home  of  the  most  ardent  free  thought  in  the  world. 


2  o  IN  TROD  UC  TION. 

VVe  reply  that  if  the  French  mind  has  a  defect,  this  defect  is 
not  logic  but  a  certain  nimble  trenchancy,  a  certain  narrow- 
ness of  view  which  is  the  reverse  of  the  spirit  of  logic 
and  analysis  ;  logic,  after  all,  has  always  the  last  word  here 
below.  Concessions  to  absurdity,  or  at  least  to  relativity, 
may  sometimes  be  necessary  in  human  affairs — and  the  French 
Revolutionists  were  wrong  not  to  recognize  it — but  such  con- 
cessions are  always  transitory.  -  Error  is  not  the  end  and  aim 
of  the  human  mind  ;  if  one  cannot  make  up  one's  account 
with  it,  if  it  is  useless  to  disparage  it  bitterly,  it  is  also  unnec- 
essary to  venerate  it.  Minds  at  once  logical  and  capacious 
are  always  sure  to  be  followed,  provided  one  gives  humanity 
time  enough ;  and  the  truth  can  wait ;  it  always  remains 
young  and  is  certain  some  day  to  be  recognized.  *"  Sometimes 
during  long  night  marches  soldiers  fall  asleep  without  ceasing 
on  that  account  to  go  forward  ;  they  march  on  in  their  dreams 
and  do  not  awaken  till  they  have  reached  their  destination  on 
the  battlefield.  It  is  thus  that  ideas  advance  in  the  human 
mind ;  they  are  so  drowsy  that  they  seem  unable  to  stand 
upright,  one  discovers  their  strength  and  their  vitality  only  by 
the  distance  they  traverse,  and  finally  day  breaks  and  they 
appear  on  the  field  and  are  victorious. 


THE    NON-RELIGION  OF  THE    FUTURE. 

part  jfirst. 

THE  GENESIS  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE 

SOCIETIES. 


CHAPTER  I. 

RELIGIOUS   PHYSICS. 

Importance  of  the  Problem  of  the  Origin  of  Religion — Universality 
OF  Religious  Beliefs  or  Superstitions — Variability  of  Religions  and 
Religious  Evolution. 

I.  Idealist  Theory  which  Attributes  the  Origin  of  Religion  to  a 
Notion  of  the  Infinite — Henotheism  of  Max  Miiller  and  Von 
Hartniann — M.  Kenan's  Instinct  for  Divinity. 

II.  Theory  of  a  Worship  of  the  Dead  and  of  Spirits — Herbert 
Spencer — Spencer's  Objections  to  the  Theory  of  the  Attribution 
of  a  Soul  to  Natural  Forces. 

III.  Answer  to  Objections— Religious  Physics  Sociological  in 
Form,  and  the  Substitution  of  Relations  between  Malevolent  or 
Beneficent  Conscious  Beings  for  Relations  between  Natural 
Forces — Socio-morphism  of  Primitive  Peoples. 

The  question  of  the  genesis  of  religion  is  more  important 

than   any   other  historical  inquiry.     It  involves  not  only  the 

truth  or  falsity  of  past  events,  but  the  value  or 

Importance  of  ^  .  , 

inquiry  into         the    reverse    of    our    ideas    and     present    beliefs. 

genesis  of  Each   of   us  has    something  at    stake   in  this  in- 

religion.  .  '^ 

vestigation.      The    causes   which     formerly    gave 

rise  to  a  belief  are  still,  in  the  majority  of  cases,  those  which 

maintain  it   in   existence  in   our  days,  and    to   take  stock   of 

these  causes  is,  whether  one  intends  it  to  be  so  or  not,  to  pass 

judgment  on  the  belief  itself.     History,  if  it  should   ever  be 

complete,   would  possess  here   the    power  of  effacing  in   the 

future  what  it  had  failed  to  justify  in  the  past     Perfectly  to 

21 


2  2        GENESIS  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

ascertain  the  origin  of  religions  would  be  at  the  same  time 
either  to  condemn  them  or  to  fortify  and  preserve  them. 

One   point   may  legitimately    be   regarded    as    attained    by 
contemporary  criticism.     After  the  labours  of  Herr  Roskoff, 

Establish  d  ^^'  l^^viUe,  and  M.  Girard  de  Rialle,  it  is  impossi- 
fact  that  every  ble  to  maintain  that  there  exist  nowadays  on  the 
peoprasreiigLs.  surface  of  the  earth  whole  peoples  absolutely 
without  religion  or  superstition,  which  among" 
non-civilized  people  amount  to  the  same  thing.'  The  reason 
why  man  is  a  superstitious  or  religious  being  is  simply  that  he 
possesses  a  high  degree  of  intelligence.  Megalithic  monu- 
ments (menhirs,  cromlechs,  dolmens),  sepulchres,  amulets,  are 
trustworthy  evidence  of  the  existence  of  religion  in  prehistoric 
times ;  and  those  fragments  of  bone  detached  from  the  skull 
and  pierced  with  holes  to  pass  a  string  through — "  cranial 
rounds  " — belong,  no  doubt,  to  the  same  category.^  Manifes- 
tations of  the  religious  spirit  date  back  thus  to  the  age  of 
polished  stone.  And  to  pass  from  facts  to  hypotheses  it  is 
conceivable  that  at  the  beginning  of  the  quaternary  period, 
perhaps  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  years  ago,  man  was 
already  feeding  upon  vague  and  elementary  superstitions, 
though  he  does  not  appear  to  have  felt  sufficient  respect  for 
his  dead  to  have  dug  sepulchres,  and  although  no  fetiches 
belonging  to  that  period  have  been  discovered. 

A  second  point  which  may  be  regarded  as  equally  estab- 
lished, and   which  results  in    important   consequences   in   the 
matter  of  method   of    research,   is  that   religion, 

Established        being    of    natural    origin,  must    have     developed 

fact  that  religion  &>  .  . 

is  of  natural  slowly  and  in  accordance  with  universal  and 
origin.  regular  laws  ;  it  must   have  originated  in   simple 

and  vague  notions  of  some  sort,  accessible  to  the  most  primi- 
tive intelligence.  And  from  that  starting  point  it  must  have 
risen  by  gradual  evolution  to  the  complex  and  precise  concep- 
tions which  characterize  it  to-day.     It  is  in  vain   for  religions 

'  Herr  Roskoff,  Das  Religionswesen  der  rohesten  Naturvoelker  (Leipzig,  1880)  ; 
M.  Girard  de  Rialle,  yl/vMc/c^/V  fcw/rtr/<f  (Paris,  1878);  M.  Reville,  Les  religions 
des  penples  non  civilis/s  (Paris,  1880). 

'■^  See  M.  G.  De  Mortillet,  Le pr^historique.     Antiquity  de  l' Aomme  (Paris,  1883). 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  23 

to  believe  themselves  immutable  ;  they  have  all  of  them  been 
borne  forward  unwittingly  by  the  movement  of  universal 
evolution.  The  great  Egyptian  Sphinx,  who  has  not  changed 
her  position  in  the  desert  these  four  thousand  years,  might 
believe  herself  to  be  stationary,  but  she  has  never  ceased  for 
an  instant  to  whirl  through  space,  borne  along  by  the  earth's 
motion  around  the  sun. 

It  remains  to  determine  what  these  primary   notions  that 
lay  at  the  bottom  of  all  religions  were.     And  here  begins  the 
disagreement  among  the  principal  authorities  on 
theories  of  its        the  science  of  religion.     Some  of  them  explam 
origin.  ^.j^^   \^\x\\\    of    religion    by    a   sort    of    mysterious 

intuition  of  supra-sensible  verity,  by  a  divination  of  God ; 
others  regard  it  as  an  intellectual  error,  a  false  hypothesis, 
which  was  natural,  however,  and  perhaps  inevitable  to  primi- 
tive intelligence.  The  first  look  upon  religion  as  an  immense 
leap  on  the  part  of  the  human  mind  over  and  beyond  the 
limits  of  the  physical  world  in  which  we  are  confined,  the 
second  believe  it  to  be  born  in  the  beginning  of  an  inexact 
interpretation  of  the  commonest  phenomena  of  the  world,  of 
objects  of  our  senses  or  of  our  consciousness  ;  for  the  first, 
religion  is  more  than  science ;  for  the  second,  religion  is 
pseudo-science.  All  idealists— Strauss,  Renan,  Matthew 
Arnold — discover  in  every  religion  the  germ  of  their  own 
especial  form  of  refined  idealism,  and  bow  down  before  it 
with  a  respect  that  might  well  appear  ironical  if  they  did  not 
afifirm  themselves  to  be  quite  sincere  ;  they  see  in  religions 
generally  the  noblest  and  most  lasting  product  of  the  human 
mind.  Their  extreme  adversaries,  on  the  contrary,  see  no  more 
in  the  origin  of  religions  than,  as  Auguste  Comte  would  have 
said,  the  expression  of  a  gross  fetichism. 

It  is  evident  that  the  problem  of  the  origin  of  religion,  in 
the  new  form   in  which   it  presents    itself  to-day,  is  quite   as 
grave  as  ever  it  was  ;  formerly  the  question  was 
species^if  mu^      whether  religion    is   revealed    or    natural  ;  to-day 
sion?  the  question  is  whether  religion  is  or  is  not  true — 

whether  it  is  or  is  not  the  product  of  an  intellectual  error,  of  a 
sort  of  inevitable  optical  illusion  which  it  is  the  business  of 


24        GENESIS  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES, 

science  to  explain  and  to  correct  ;  whether,  in  effect,  the  god 
of  mythical  and  symbolical  religion  is  not  simply  a  magnified 
idol. 

The  positivist  theory  of  religion  seemed  some  years  ago 
close  upon  its  ultimate  triumph.'  Many  had  accepted  it, 
but  without  having  fully  perceived  all  of  its  con- 
thLVnoCge^r  scquenccs.  At  the  present  moment  it  is,  on  the 
in  possession  of  contrary,  strongly  contested.  New  elements, 
have  been  introduced  into  the  problem  and 
the  whole  question  must  be  gone  over  again.  Max  Miiller 
in  especial  has  made  what  might  be  almost  called  a  desperate 
effort  to  make  out  a  case  for  the  objectivity  and  essential 
rationality  of  religion,  which  had  both  been  compromised  by 
positivism.^  From  a  different  point  of  view  Herbert  Spencer 
also,  in  his  "  Sociology,"  has  criticised  theories  which  regard 
fetichism  or  naturism  as  the  principle  of  religion. 

According  to  Max  Miiller  some  notion  of  divinity,  in 
especial  in  the  form  of  a  notion  of  the  infinite,  must  have 
preceded  the  conception  of  God.  Gods  are 
theor^  ^"^^^"'^  simply  subsequent  personifications  of  this  great 
innate  idea ;  our  ancestors  kneeled  in  worship 
long  before  they  possessed  a  name  for  Him  before  whom 
they  were  kneeling.  Even  at  the  present  day  we  recognize 
in  the  last  resort  the  vanity  of  all  the  titles  of  the  unknown 
God  whom  we  must  adore  really  in  silence.  Religion,  which  is 
responsible  for  the  origin  of  the  gods  of  history,  may  there- 
fore well  survive  them.  We  say  religion ;  for  in  effect, 
according  to  Max  Miiller,  all  religions  amount  in  the  end  to 
one,  since  they  may  all  be  traced  back  through  the  long 
course  of  their  development  to  a  single  original  conception, 
that  namely  of  the  infinite,  which  from  the  very  beginning 
was  present  in  the  mind  of  man.  This  universal  conception, 
however,  Max  Miiller  does  not  regard  as  in  any  sense  mystical 
or  innate,  in  the  old  acceptation  of  that  word.     He  willingly 


'We  find  it  adopted  or  almost  so  even  by  spiritualists,  like  M.Vacherot,   La 
religion,  Paris,    1869. 

*  See  Origin  and  Development  of  Religion,  by  F.   Max   Miiller,    M.  A. 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  25 

adopts  the  axiom  :  Nihil  in  fide  quod  non  antea  fuerit  in 
sensu.^  But  in  his  opinion  some  perception  of  the  infinite 
is  logically  involved  in  a  perception  of  the  finite,  and  this 
conception  of  infinity,  with  its  basis  at  once  in  sense  and 
reason,  is  the  true  foundation  of  religion.  Given  the  five 
senses  of  a  savage.  Max  Miiller  undertakes  to  make  him 
sensible  of  or  at  least  experience  some  presentiment  of  the 
infinite,  make  him  desire  it,  feel  some  aspiration  toward  it. 
Take  the  sense  of  sight  for  example  :  "  Man  sees,  he  sees  to 
a  certain  point  ;  and  then  his  eyesight  breaks  down.  But 
exactly  where  his  eyesight  breaks  down  there  presses  upon 
him,  whether  he  likes  it  or  not,  the  perception  of  the  unlimited 
or  the  infinite."  "  It  may  be  said,"  he  adds,  "  that  this  is  not 
perception  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  word.  No  more  it  is, 
but  still  less  is  it  mere  reasoning."  "  If  it  seems  too  bold 
to  say  that  man  actually  sees  the  invisible,  let  us  say  that  he 
suffers  from  the  invisible,  and  the  invisible  is  only  a  special 
name  for  the  infinite."  Man  not  only  necessarily  divines  the 
infinite  as  existing  beyond  the  limits  of  the  finite,  and  as  it 
were  enveloping  it ;  he  perceives  it  within  the  limits  of  the 
finite,  and  as  it  were  penetrating  it;  the  infinite  divisibility  of 
matter  is  manifest  to  the  senses,  the  fact  that  science  seems 
to  demand  the  existence  of  an  irreducible  atom  as  a  necessary 
postulate  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding.  And  what  is  true 
of  space  is  equally  true  of  time,  applies  equally  to  quality 
and  quantity.  "  Beyond,  behind,  beneath,  and  within  the 
finite,  the  infinite  is  always  present  to  our  senses.  It  presses 
upon  us,  it  grows  upon  us  from  every  side.  '  What  we  call 
finite  in  space  and  time,  in  form  and  word,  is  nothing  but  a 
veil  or  net  which  we  ourselves  have  thrown  over  the  infinite." 
And  let  it  not  be  objected  that  primitive  languages  supply  no 
means  of  expressing  the  idea  of  infinity,  of  the  beyond,  which 
is  given  in  every  finite  sensation.  Do  the  languages  of 
antiquity  supply  a  means  of  designating  the  infinite  shades 
and  variety  of  colour?  Democritus  was  acquainted  with  but 
four  colours :  black,  white,  red,  and  yellow.  Shall  we  say, 
therefore,  that  the  ancients  did  not  perceive  the  blue  of 
'  Origin  and  Development  of  Religion,  p.  2IO. 

r  V'  OF    THK  ' 

((  UNIVERSITY 
Of 


26        GENESIS  OF  A'ELIGfOXS  IX  PRIMITIVE   SOCIETIES. 

heaven?  The  sky  was  as  blue  for  them  as  it  is  for  us,  but 
they  had  not  yet  established  a  conventional  designation  for 
the  sensation  it  afforded  them.  And  similarly  in  the  case  of 
the  infinite  for  the  primitive  man  ;  it  existed  for  him  although 
he  had  not  as  yet  invented  a  name  for  it.  Well,  what  is  this 
infinite,  in  the  last  resort,  but  the  object  to  which  every 
religion  addresses  itself?  A  religious  being  is  essentially  one 
who  is  not  satisfied  with  such  and  such  a  finite  sensation  ;. 
who  looks  everywhere  for  the  beyond — looks  for  it  in  life,  in 
death,  in  nature,  in  himself.  To  be  divinely  aware  of  a  vague 
somewhat  that  one  cannot  quite  understand,  to  feel  a  venera- 
tion for  it  and  then  to  endeavour  to  fit  it  with  a  name,  to  call 
to  it  stammeringly,  these  are  the  beginnings  of  every  system 
of  religious  worship.  The  religion  of  the  infinite  compre- 
hends and  precedes  all  others,  and  since  the  infinite  itself  is 
given  in  sensation,  it  follows  that  "  Religion  is  simply  an- 
other development  of  sensuous  perception,  quite  as  much  as 
reason  is."  ' 

Max  Miiller  is  equally  critical  in  his  attitude  toward  posi- 

tivists,  who  regard    fetichism    as    the  primitive  religion,  and 

toward    the  orthodox,  who  find    in    monotheism 

poS"pos?tiv-     the    natural    uncorrupted    type    of    religion.      In 

ists  and  orthodox    \^\^  opinion,  to  name  a  god  or  gods  implies  ante- 

monotlieists,  ,,,  •  e  ^-  r^ii-- 

cedently  the  possession  of  a  notion  ot  the  divine, 
of  the  infinite  ;  gods  are  simply  the  different  forms,  more  or 
less  imperfect  indeed,  in  which  divers  peoples  have  bodied 
forth  one  and  the  same  idea ;  religion  is,  so  to  speak,  a 
laneuag-e  into  which  men  have  endeavoured  to  translate  one 
and  the  same  internal  aspiration— that  of  comprehending 
the  great  unknown  ;  if  man's  tongue  and  intelligence  have 
gone  astray,  if  the  diversity  and  inequality  of  religions  are 
comparable  to  the  diversity  and  inequality  of  languages,  that 
does  not  necessarily  mean  that  at  bottom  the  veritable  prin- 
ciple and  object  of  all  these  different  religions,  as  of  all  these 
different  languages,  are  not  very  nearly  the  same.  According 
to  Max  Miiller  a  fetich,  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word 
{factitius),  is  no  more  than  a  symbol  which  presupposes  an 

'  Origin  of  Religion,    p.  25. 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  2 J 

idea  symbolized ;  the  idea  of  God  cannot  come  out  of  a 
fetich  unless  it  has  already  been  put  there.  Casual  objects, 
such  as  stones,  shells,  the  tail  of  a  lion,  a  tangle  of  hair,  or 
any  such  rubbish,  do  not  possess  in  themselves  a  theogonic 
or  god-producing  character.  The  phenomena  of  fetichism, 
therefore,  are  always  historically  and  psychologically  second- 
ary. Religions  do  not  begin  in  fetichisms,  it  is  truer  to  say 
that  they  end  in  it ;  not  one  of  them  has  shown  itself  capable 
of  maintaining  its  original  purity  in  connection  with  fetichism. 
Portuguese  Catholics  who  reproach  negroes  with  the  feiti(^os 
were  the  first  (were  they  not  ?)  to  have  their  rosaries,  their 
crosses,  their  sacred  images,  blessed  by  the  priests,  before 
their  departure  from  their  native  land. 

If   fetichism,   understood  as  Max   Miiller  understands  it,  is 
not   the   primitive   form   of   religion,    if    self-conscious    mono- 
theism   is   equally    incapable    of    maintaining    its 

Henotheism.         ,    .  ,  .      .  ,    ^  ^i     ^    ^i 

claim  to  be  so,  it  is  more  exact  to  say  that  the 

earliest  religion,  at  least  in  India,  consisted  in  the  worship 
of  different  objects,  accepted  one  after  the  other  as  represent- 
ing a  god  (fz?)  and  not  the  unique  and  sole  God  {/uovo?).  It 
is  this  that  Max  Miiller  calls  by  a  word  invented  by  him  : 
henotheism  {si?,  svo?,  in  opposition  to  /xovo?),  or  better, 
kathenotheism.'  In  ordinary  polytheism  the  gods  are  arranged 
in  hierarchies,  belong  to  different  ranks  ;  order  reigns  in  heaven  ; 
but  in  the  beginning  no  such  system  of  subordination  could 
have  existed.  Each  god  must  have  seemed  in  turn  the  most 
powerful  to  whoever  invoked  him  ;  Indra,  Varuna,  Agni,  Mitra, 
Somah  were  accustomed  to  hear  the  same  epithets  addressed 
to  them;  religious  anarchy  preceded  religious  monarchy. 
"Among  you,  O  Gods,"  says  Rishi  Manu  Vaivasvata,  "  there 
is  none  that  is  large,  there  is  none  that  is  small,  there  is  none 
that  is  old  nor  young:  you  are  all  great  indeed."  They  are 
all  but  different  symbols  of  the  same  idea,  of  an  adoration  for 
that  which  overpasses  the  limits  of  the  human  mind,  for  the 
mysterious  infinite  whose  existence  our  senses  prove  by  their 
very  incapacity  of  taking  cognizance  of  it. 

'  This  word  has  met  with  success  in  Germany.     Hartmann  also  adopts  a  theory  of 
henotheism.    . 


28        GENESIS  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMIIIVE    SOCIETIES. 

Max  Muller  endeavours  to   trace  the  evolution  of    Hindu 

thought  from  a  period  long  previous  to  the  birth  of  Buddhism, 

_,,        ,  ,.        which    was    the    Protestantism    of    India.      The 

The  evolution 

of  the  Hindu  learned  philologist  sees  in  the  development  of 
faith  typical.  religion  in  India  one  of  the  essential  types  of 
the  development  of  human  religions  generally.  It  may  be 
even,  he  thinks,  that  the  Hindus,  who  started  from  as  low 
a  plane  as  we,  have  in  some  respects  reached  a  more  con-, 
siderable  height.  Let  us  follow  him  in  this  inquiry,  which 
has  nowhere  been  conducted  more  anxiously  and  indefatigably 
than  in  the  great  country  which  may  almost  be  called  the 
home  of  meditation.  Let  us  take  with  him  a  "  bird's-eye 
view"  of  what  may  be  regarded  as  an  epitome  of  human 
history. 

ndvT€?  Si  S^ecov  xoiriovff  av^pooTtoi,  said   Homer.     It  was 

not  within   the   domain    of    the    wholly    tangible    that    India 

sought   for   its  gods  ;   understanding  by  tangible 

Progress  from  o  &  '  o       y  o 

the  semi-tangible  whatever  one  can  touch  on  all  sides,  stones,  shells, 
to  the  intangible.   ^^^^^^   gt^.  •   and   Max   Muller  sees  in   this  fact 

(which,  by  the  way,  may  be  contested)  a  fresh  argument 
against  the  fetich  theory.  On  the  contrary,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  his  great,  snow-capped  mountains,  of  which  our 
comparatively  level  Europe  can  scarcely  afford  us  even  an 
idea,  in  the  presence  of  his  immense  beneficent  rivers  with 
their  rumbling  cataracts,  their  eddies,  their  unknown  sources, 
in  the  presence  of  the  ocean,  stretching  away  beyond  the  line 
of  vision,  the  Hindu  found  himself  surrounded  by  things,  of 
which  he  could  touch  and  understand  but  some  inconsiderable 
portion — of  which  the  origin  and  destiny  baffled  him.  It  was 
in  the  domain  of  the  semi-tangible  that  India  found  its  semi- 
deities.  One  step  beyond,  Hindu  thought  domesticated 
itself  in  the  region  of  the  intangible,  that  is  to  say,  in  the 
region  of  things  which,  though  visible,  lie  entirely  beyond  our 
reach — the  visible  heaven,  the  stars,  the  sun,  the  moon,  the 
dawn,  which  were  regarded  in  India,  as  also  elsewhere,  as  true 
divinities.  Add  to  these  thunder,  which  for  the  Hindus  also 
descends  from  heaven  with  a  "  howl,"  the  wind  sometimes  so 
terrible,  which,  however,  in  the  hot  days  of  summer  "  pours 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  29 

honey"  upon  man,  and  the  rain,  sent  by  the  beneficent  rain 
god,  Indra.  Having  thus  created  their  deities  and  peopled 
heaven  somewhat  at  haphazard,  the  Hindus  were  not  slow  to 
distribute  them  into  classes  and  families — to  invent  for  them  a 
necessary  background  of  genealogy.  There  is  a  record  of 
certain  efforts  to  establish  in  the  Hindu  heaven,  as  in  the 
Olympus  of  the  Greeks,  a  system  of  government,  a  supreme 
authority ;  in  a  number  of  hymns  the  notion  of  the  one  God, 
Creator  and  Master  of  the  world,  is  clearly  expressed  :  He  is 
"  the  Father  that  begat  us,  the  Ruler  who  knows  the  laws  and 
the  worlds,  in  Him  alone  all  creatures  repose." 

But    the    Hindu    mind    was    destined    to    rise    at   a  bound 

above    Greek   polytheism    and   Hebrew    monotheism.       It  is 

well  to  see  God  in  nature.     There  lies  still  a  step 

And  from  the  \      r  u    1  •    r     • 

intangible  to  the    beyond:    to    Ignore    nature.       A    firm    beliet    m 

unreal.  ^^g  reality  of  this  world,  in  the   value  of  this  life, 

enters  as  an  essential   element   into  the  belief  in   a  personal 

God,  superior  to  the  world  and  distinct  from  it,  like  the  Javeh 

of   the   Hebrews.      The   distinguishing   characteristic   of   the 

Hindu    mind    is    precisely    a  certain   scepticism   in   regard  to 

the  world,  a  persuasion  of  the  vanity  of  nature ;    so  that  the 

Hindu    god  possesses  and    can    possess  nothing    in  common 

with   Jupiter  or  Javeh.     He  who  sees  no  more  in  material 

force  than  a  play  of  the  senses,  will  see  no  more  in  the  power 

which   is  supposed  to  direct  that  force  than  a  play  of  the 

imagination  ;    faith  in  a  Creator  shares  the  fate  of  faith  in  a 

creation.     It  is  in  vain  for  Hindu  poets  to  vindicate  sraddJid 

faith,  for  the  gods.     Indra  in   especial,  the  most  popular  of 

the  divinities,  to  whom  the  supreme  epithet  of  Visvakarman, 

the  maker  of  all  things,  is  given,  is  of  all  others  most  subject 

to  be  doubted.     "There  is    no  Indra.     Who  has  seen  him? 

Whom  shall  we  praise?"     (Rig.  vii.  89,3.)      It  is  true  that 

the  poet  after  these  bitter  w'ords  represents  Indra  as  appearing" 

in  person,  as  in  the  book  of  Job.     "  Here  I  am,  O  worshipper! 

behold  me  here.     In   might   I    overcome  all  creatures."     But 

the  faith  of  the   poet  and  of  the  thinker  takes  fire  but  for  a 

moment;  we  enter  into  a  period   of  doubt  which  Max  Miiller 

designates  by  the   name  of  adevism   and  which   he  carefully 


3°        GEA'ES/S  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

distinguishes  from  atheism  properly  so  called.     And  in  effect 
Hindus  did  not  reject  the  very  notion  of   a  god,   the  Greek 
5£o?;  they  sought  God   simply  back  of  and  beyond  the  per- 
sonal  and   capricious  deities   that  up  to  that   time  they  had 
adored ;    such   deities    became    for    them    names    simply,  but 
names   of   some   thing,  of  some  being,  unknown.     "  There   is 
only  one  being,  although  the   poets  call  him  by  a  thousand 
names."     Buddhism  itself,  which  came  later  and  did  no  more 
than   develop    tendencies    already    existing   in    Brahmanism, 
was    not,    in    Max    Muller's    judgment,     originally    atheistic. 
Adevism  was  no  more  for  India,  with  some  slight  exceptions, 
than  a  period  of  transition;   the  Hindu  mind  passed  it  as  a 
step  toward  a  higher  level.       And    yet   what  anxiety,   what 
incertitude,  is  expressed   in  certain  hymns  which   belong,  no 
doubt,  to  this  unhappy  epoch.     The  Vedic  poets  no  longer 
glorify  the  sky  nor  the  dawn,  they  do  not  celebrate  the  powers 
of  Indra,  nor  the  wisdom  of  Visvakarman  and  Pragapati.     They 
move  about,  as  they  themselves  say,  "  as  if  enveloped  in  mist 
and  idle  speech."     Another  says:    "  My  ears  vanish,  my  eyes 
vanish,  and  the  light  also  which  dwells  in  my  heart ;    my  mind 
with  its  far  off  longing  leaves  me  ;    what  shall  I  say,  and  what 
shall    I  think?    .    .    .    Who  knows    from  whence    this  great 
creation  sprang?  and  whether  it  is  the  work  of  a  Creator  or 
not?     The  most  High  Seer,  that  is  in  the  highest  heaven,  he 
knows  it,  or  perchance  even  he  knows  not."  (Rig.  x.   129.) 
There   is   profoundness    in    these    last    words,   and    how    the 
problem  of  the  creation  has  been  probed  by  the  human  intel- 
lect since  that  epoch!     The  evolution  of  the  ideas  ^indicated 
in  the  passages  of  the  hymns  reaches  its  climax  invwhat  are^ 
called   the   Upanishads,  the  last   literary  compositions  which 
still  belong  to  the  Vedic  period,  where  all  the  philosophy  of 
the  time  is  found  condensed,  and  where  one  catches  glimpses  of 
the  modern  doctrine  of  Schopenhauer  and  of  Von  Hartmann. 
After  having  meditated  a  long  time  the  Hindu  believed  him- 
self to   have    succeeded.       Max    Muller    cites    the    surprising 
dialogue  between  Pragapati  and  Indra,  in  which  the  latter  ac- 
quires, after  a  long  effort,  an  acquaintance  with  the  "  self  hidden 
within  the  heart,"    the  Atman,  what    Kant  would  call  "  the 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  3 1 

transcendental  ego."  In  the  beginning  Indra  supposed  this 
ego  to  be  the  visible  reflection  of  his  body,  covered  with  its 
splendid  raiment,  in  the  water.  But  no  ;  for  when  the  body- 
suffers  or  perishes,  Atman  would  perish.  "  I  see  no  good  in 
this  doctrine."  Indra  then  entertained  the  hypothesis  that 
the  Atman  reveals  itself  in  dreams,  when  the  mind  is  given 
over  to  the  control  of  one  knows  not  what  invisible  power, 
and  forgets  the  pains  of  life.  But  no,  for  in  dreams  one  still 
weeps,  still  suffers.  Or  may  not  the  Atman,  the  supreme  ego, 
be  simply  the  man  in  dreamless  sleep,  in  perfect  repose?  The 
ideal  of  repose,  forgetfulness,  of  profound  and  sweet  sleep,  has 
always  possessed  great  charm  for  the  Orient.  But  no,  "  for  he 
who  sleeps  does  not  know  himself  (his  self),  that  he  is  I,  nor  does 
he  know  anything  that  exists.  He  is  gone  to  utter  annihila- 
tion. I  see  no  good  in  this  doctrine."  It  is  only  after  passing 
through  all  these  successive  stages,  that  the  Hindu  mind 
comes  at  last  to  formulate  what  seems  to  it  altogether  the 
most  profound  truth  and  the  supreme  ideal.  Atman  is  the 
self,  leaving  the  body  and  freeing  itself  from  pleasure  and 
pain,  taking  cognizance  of  its  own  eternity  (Upan.  viii.  7-12); 
recognizing  the  Old,  who  is  difficult  to  be  seen,  who  has 
entered  into  darkness.  .  .  It  is  smaller  than  small,  greater 
than  great;  hidden  in  the  heart  of  the  creature,  (ii.  12,  20.) 
Atman  the  "  highest  person,"  whom  the  sage  finally  discovers 
in  himself,  lies  also  at  the  bottom  of  all  other  beings  than  him- 
self. Atman,  the  subjective  ego,  is  identical  with  Brahma,  the 
objective  ego.  Brahma  is  in  us,  and  we  are  in  all  things,  the 
distinction  between  individuals  vanishes,  nature  and  its  gods 
are  absorbed  in  Brahma,  and  Brahma  is  "  the  very  ether  of 
our  hearts."  "  Thou  art  it,  tat  tvam,  is  the  word  of  life  and  of 
the  whole  world."  To  find  one's  self  in  everything,  to  feel 
the  eternity  of  everything,  is  the  supreme  religion  ;  it  is  the 
religion  of  Spinoza.  "  There  is  one  eternal  thinker,  thinking 
the  non-eternal  thoughts ;  he,  though  one,  fulfils  the  desires 
of  many.  .  .  Brahma  cannot  be  reached  by  speech,  by  mind,  or 
by  eye.  He  cannot  be  apprehended,  except  by  him  who  says: 
He  is."  This  Brahma  in  whom  everything  vanishes  as  a 
dream,  "  is  a  great  terror,  like  a  drawn  sword  ";  but  he  is  also 


ance. 


32        GENESIS  OE  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE   SOCIETIES. 

the  highest  joy  to  him  who  has  once  found  him  ;  he  is  the 
appcaser  of  desire  and  intelligence.  "  Those  who  know  him 
become  immortal." 

We  have  at  last   reached  with   Max   MuUer  "  the   end    of 
the  long  journey  which  we  undertook  to  trace."      We  have 

seen    the    Hindu     religion,    which    is    typical    of 
Hmdn  toler-       human    religions,  develop    gradually,    endeavour 

to  cope  with  the  infinite  in  its  various  forms, 
until  it  attains  the  height  of  conceiving  it  as  Brahma,  the 
eternal  thinker,  of  whom  the  world  is  no  more  than  a  transi- 
tory thought.  The  gods  are  dead  ;  sacrifices,  rites,  observ- 
ances of  all  sorts  are  useless  ;  the  sole  rite  which  is  appro- 
priate as  an  offering  to  the  infinite  is  meditation  and  detach- 
ment. Do  the  debris  therefore  of  the  earlier  stages  of  the 
faith  disappear  and  the  temples  fall  in  dust,  and  Agni,  Indra, 
and  all  these  splendid  titles  pass  into  oblivion?  Not  at  all, 
and  here,  following  Max  MuUer,  we  may  find  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  religions  of  India  a  lesson  for  ourselves  in  toler- 
ance and  generosity.  The  Brahmans  understood  that,  as 
man  grows  from  infancy  to  old  age,  the  idea  of  the  divine 
must  grow  in  him  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave  ;  a  religion 
which  does  not  live  and  grow  is  a  dead  religion.  The 
Hindus  accordingly  have  divided  the  life  of  the  individual 
into  distinct  periods — Asramas,  as  they  say  ;  in  the  earlier 
Asramas  the  believer  invokes  gods,  offers  sacrifices,  puts  up 
prayers ;  it  is  only  later,  when  he  has  accomplished  these 
naive  duties  and  tempered  his  soul  by  long  contact  with  the 
juvenile  aspects  of  the  faith,  that  in  his  mature  reason  he  rises 
above  the  gods,  and  regards  all  sacrifices  and  ceremonies  as 
vain  forms,  and  thenceforth  finds  his  cult  in  the  highest 
science  which  is  to  him  the  highest  religion,  the  Vedanta. 
Thus  in  the  life  of  the  individual  the  various  stages  of  relig- 
ion exist  in  an  harmonious  hierarchy.  Even  in  our  days  in  a 
Brahman  family  one  may  see  the  grandfather  at  the  summit 
of  the  intellectual  ladder  looking  down  without  disdain  upon 
his  son,  who  fulfils  each  day  his  sacred  duties,  and  at  his 
grandson  learning  by  heart  the  ancient  hymns.  All  genera- 
tions live  in  peace,  side  by  side.     The  different  castes,  each  of 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  33 

which  follows  a  system  of  belief  adapted  to  its  degree,  do  the 
same.  All  adore,  at  bottom,  the  same  god,  but  this  god 
takes  care  to  make  himself  accessible  to  everyone,  to  stoop 
for  those  whose  station  does  not  lift  them  above  the  earth. 
"  It  is  thus,"  says  Max  Miiller,  "  that  every  religion,  if  it  is  a 
bond  of  union  between  the  wise  and  the  foolish,  the  old  and 
the  young,  must  be  pliant,  must  be  high,  and  deep,  and  broad  ; 
bearing  all  things,  believing  all  things,  enduring  all  things." 
Let  us  be  as  tolerant  as  our  fathers  in  India,  let  us  not  be 
indignant  against  the  superstitions  above  which  we  ourselves 
have  risen  and  which  served  us  in  their  day  as  stepping 
stones.  Let  us  learn  how  to  discover  the  element  of  good- 
ness and  truth  in  all  the  creeds  of  humanity.  It  may  be  that 
all  human  religions,  if  they  could  once  be  freed  from  the 
legends  which  drape  them,  would  unite  to  furnish  for  the 
cultivated  portion  of  mankind  a  religion  really  complete. 
"  Who  knows  but  that  their  very  foundation  may  serve  once 
more,  like  the  catacombs,  or  like  the  crypts  beneath  our  old 
cathedrals,  for  those  who,  to  whatever  creed  they  may  belong, 
long  for  something  better,  purer,  older,  and  truer  than  what 
they  can  find  in  the  statutable  sacrifices,  services,  and  sermons 
of  the  days  in  which  their  lot  on  earth  has  been  cast." 

Is  this  elevated  theory  exact  ?     In  the  first  place  it  seeks 

erroneously  to  find   in  Hindu  civilization  the   type   of  primi- 

„  ,  .  .      .        tive  relig;ion  ;  more  than  that,  it  inverts  the  order 
Criticism  of  ^  ' 

MaxMtiUer's  of  evolution  by  presupposing  at  the  beginning 
*^^°^^'  the  existence  of  complex  notions  and  profound 

symbols  which  have  been  misconceived,  it  holds,  by  later 
generations  only  through  an  inability  correctly  to  interpret 
the  language  in  which  they  lay  embalmed.'  The  capital 
defect  in  the  theory,  however,  is  that  it  discovers  the  origin 
of  religion  in  the  vaguest  and  most  modern  of  metaphysical 

'  Max  Muller,  as  is  well  known,  goes  the  length  of  believing  that  the  authors 
of  the  first  myths  were  perfectly  conscious  that  they  were  speaking  in  parables  ;  and 
that  subsequent  generations  misunderstood  them,  because  they  personified  the  fig- 
ures and  the  names  by  which  the  Divine  was  referred  to  ;  so  that  mythology 
becomes  literally  the  science  of  a  disease  of  language. 


34        GEA'ESIS   OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

ideas,  that  namely  of  the  infinite.  Max  Miiller  holds  that 
this  idea  is  furnished  even  by  the  senses;  his  system  presents 
itself  to  us  as  an  effort  at  a  reconciliation  between  the  sen- 
sualists and  the  idealists.  But  the  doctrine  rests  upon  a 
confusion.  A  perception  of  relativity  is  one  thing,  a  percep- 
tion of  infinity  is  another;  some  objects  are  great,  some 
are  small,  and  any  object  is  great  or  small  according  to  the 
standard  of  comparison — that  is  what  the  senses,  or  rather 
the  memory,  informs  us  of ;  and  unless  the  metaphysical 
subtlety  of  a  modern  scholar  whispers  something  in  their  ear, 
that  is  all  they  tell  us.  Max  Miiller  seems  to  believe  that 
the  perception  of  space  supplies  us  directly  with  a  perception 
of  infinity ;  but  over  and  above  any  question  of  the  psycho- 
logical inexactitude  of  this  account,  it  is  irreconcilable  with 
the  historical  facts.  The  infinity  of  space  is  an  idea  which 
metaphysicians  alone,  and  that  too  in  comparatively  late 
time.s,  have  succeeded  in  realizing.  The  horizon  is,  on  the 
face  of  it,  a  physical  limit.  The  child  fancies  that  he  can  go 
close  up  to  the  horizon  and  touch  the  beginnings  of  the  celes- 
tial dome  with  his  finger ;  the  ancients  conceived  the  heavens 
as  an  inverted  bowl  of  hard  crystal,  sown  with  luminous 
points.'  For  us  who  have  been  told  since  we  were  children 
that  the  stars  are  greater  than  the  earth,  and  are  separated 
from  us  by  a  distance  unimaginably  great,  the  spectacle  of 
the  heavens  by  a  necessary  association  gives  rise  to  a  feeling 

'  Among  the  most  ingenious  and  least  contestable  of  Max  Muller's  suggestions, 
we  cite  the  paragraph  devoted  to  the  Vedic  deity  Aditi,  one  of  tlie  names  of  the 
dawn  :  "  You  will  be  as  surprised  as  I  certainly  was  surprised  wlien  the  fact 
first  presented  itself  to  me,  that  there  really  is  a  deity  in  the  Veda  who  is  simply 
called  the  boundless  or  the  infinite,  in  Sanscrit  A-difi.  Aditi  is  derived  from  diti, 
and  the  negative  particle  a.  Diti,  again,  is  regularly  derived  from  a  root  DA 
(dyati),  to  bind,  from  which  dita,  the  participle,  meaning  bound,  and  diti,  a  sub- 
stantive, meaning  binding  and  bound.  Aditi,  therefore,  must  originally  have 
meant  without  bounds,  not  chained  nor  inclosed,  boundless,  infinite,  infini- 
tude." 

This  etymology,  on  the  contrary,  seems  to  us  rather  to  be  calculated  to  show  jire- 
cisely  that  the  conception  of  infinity  is  not  primitive,  and  that  the  first  time  the 
Hindus  invoked  the  dawn  under  tlie  name  of  Aditi,  they  were  far  from  possess- 
ing any  distinction  between  finite  and  infinite.  The  night  was  for  them  a  prison- 
house,  the  return  of  day  was  their  deliverance.  It  is  well  known  that  they 
represented  day  as  a  luminous  cow,  which  moved  slowly  out  of  the  stable  at  night 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  35 

of  the  incommensurable  and  the  infinite.  There  is  no  reason 
to  suppose  that  anything  analogous  took  place  in  the  mind  of 
primitive  man  when  he  lifted  his  eyes  on  high.  Primitive 
man  has  not  the  least  idea  that  the  power  of  vision  is  limited, 
that  the  vault  of  heaven  is  the  vault  of  his  incapacity  and  that 
infinite  space  stretches  beyond ;  habitually,  primitive  man 
locates  the  end  of  the  world  at  the  extremity  of  his  line  of  vision, 
which  forms  on  all  sides  of  him  a  visible  and  motionless  sphere. 
It  is  difficult  for  him  to  understand  that  heavenly  space  is 
greater  than  the  visible  world.  He  finds  it  equally  difficult  to 
conceive  the  infinitely  little ;  the  infinite  ciivisibility  of  matter 
©f  which,  according  to  Max  Miiller,  the  senses  take  cogni- 
zance, is  a  conception  which  results  only  from  the  most 
abstract  reasoning.  Man's  natural  belief  is  that  the  divisi- 
bility of  matter  stops  at  the  same  point  that  his  power  of 
taking  cognizance  of  it  does — at  the  visible  atom. 

As  to   this  "  suffering   from   the   invisible "    of  which   Max 

Miiller    speaks,   it    is    an    altogether    modern    disease,  which, 

instead  of  giving  rise  to  the  idea  of  the  infinite, 

"Suffering from    is,  ou  the  Contrary,  a  late  product  of  this  notion 

the  invisible,"  a  ,  ■    ,  •.       ir  •      j    i_      r  r    1  1    j 

modern  malady,  ^hicli  was  itself  acquired  by  force  of  knowledge 
and  of  reasoning ;  far  from  marking  the  point 
from  which  religions  spring,  the  "  suffering  from  the  unknown  " 
stamps  their  insufficiency,  is  the  beginning  of  their  end. 
Primitive   man   troubles   himself    little   about   the   infinity   of 

and  stepped  across  the  fields  of  heaven  and  of  earth.  Sometimes  these  cows  are 
represented  as  stolen  and  confined  in  sombre  caverns.  Aurora  herself  is  retained 
in  the  depths  of  Rita;  night  threatens  to  reign  without  end,  but  the  gods  set  out 
in  search  of  her,  Indra  discovers  and  delivers  her,  and  with  her  aid,  the  cows  bellowing 
for  liberty  are  discovered  in  their  cavern.  It  seems  to  us  that  for  one  who  enters 
into  the  spirit  of  these  primitive  legends,  it  is  easy  to  determine  the  primitive 
sense  of  Aditi.  Aditi  is  the  dawn  who,  confined  one  knows  not  where,  succeeds 
at  last  in  breaking  bonds  and  appears  radiantly  in  the  open  heaven,  delivering  and 
delivered,  breaking  the  jail  in  which  the  hours  of  darkness  have  confined  the 
world.  Aditi  is  the  dawn,  freed  and  giving  freedom.  And,  by  an  extension  of 
meaning,  it  comes  to  signify  the  immortal  and  imperishable  light  which  no  power 
can  veil  or  hide  for  more  than  a  day.  Whereas,  Diti  signifies  what  is  mortal  and 
perishable  and  prisoned  in  the  bounds  of  matter.  This  construction  is  simple,  and 
what  is  more,  is  confirmed  by  the  legends  to  which  we  have  just  alluded  ;  after  hav- 
ing advocated  it  in  the  Revue  philosophique  (December,  1879),  we  find  it  adopted 
by  M.  Reville,  ProUgomenes  h  Vhistoire  dcs  religions,  1 88 1. 


36        GEXESIS  OF  RELIGIOXS   IN  PRIMITIVE   SOCIETIES.    ' 

nature  and  the  eternal  silence  of  infinite  space  ;  he  constructs 
a  world  after  the  model  of  his  own  houses  and  shuts  himself 
safely  up  in  it.  It  is  only  the  visible  world  that  troubles  him  ; 
he  finds  in  it  an  object  more  than  sufficient  for  his  utmost 
physical  and  intellectual  activity  ;  he  does  not  go  far  afield  in 
search  of  his  gods  ;  he  finds  them,  so  to  speak,  under  his  hand, 
touches  them  with  his  finger,  lives  in  their  company.  The 
essence  of  their  power  over  him  lies  in  the  fact  that  they  are- 
neighbours  of  his.  To  his  gross  intelligence  the  greatness  of 
the  gods  is  not  commensurate  with  their  intrinsic  infinity,  but 
with  their  power  over  him  ;  if  heaven  neither  lighted  him  nor 
warmed  him  with  its  sun,  it  would  not  be  the  universal  father, 
the  Dyaush-pita,  the  Zev?,  the  Jupiter.  We  do  not  mean  to 
say  with  Feuerbach  that  religion  strikes  root  in  gross  self- 
interest  and  brutal  egoism  simply  ;  in  his  relations  with  the 
gods,  as  in  his  relations  with  his  fellows,  man  is  partly  selfish, 
partly  unselfish  :  what  we  maintain  is  that  primitive  man  is 
not  an  advanced  rationalist  of  the  type  of  Max  IMiiller,  that 
the  conception  of  infinity  was  attained  independently  of 
religious  faith,  and,  more  than  that,  is  in  conflict  with 
religious  faith  and  will  ultimately  destroy  it.  W^hen  in  the 
progress  of  human  thought  the  universe  is  once  conceived  as 
infinite,  it  overpasses  the  gods  and  unseats  them.  This  hap- 
pened in  Greece  at  the  time  of  Democritus  and  Epicurus. 
Positive  religion  deiyands^  a  finite,  world  :  primitive  people 
did  not  rear  temples  to  the  Infinite  in  the  hopes  of  domesti- 
cating Him.  Max  Miiller  pronounces  a  eulogy  upon  the 
Hindus  for  their  adevism  ;  was  it  really  to  their  conception 
of  the  infinite  that  they  owed  their  wisdom,  and  might  not 
the  idea  of  infinity  alone  have  quite  as  well  led  them  to 
atheism  ?  When  or.'e  learns  to  contemplate  the  world  as  an 
eternajly  lengthening  chain  of  phenomena,  one  no  longer 
hopes,  by  a  futile  prayer,  to  stop  or  to  modify  the  march 
of  such  inflexible  determinism  ;  one  contents  one's  self  with 
investigating  it  by  science  or  entering  into  it  in  some  field 
of  action.  Religion  disappears  in  science  or  morality.  There 
remains,  it  is  true,  a  final  hypothesis  that  one  may  main- 
tain :    one    may    apotheosize    the    infinite,    make    over   to    it, 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  37 

after  the  manner  of  the  Brahmans,  of  the  ancient  and  modern 
Buddhists,  of  the  Schopenhauers  and  the  Hartmanns,  a 
donation  of  some  mysterious  unity  of  essence  ;|  but  if  so, 
prayer  expires  in  meditation,  in  ecstasy,  in  a  monotonous 
rocking  of  the  cradle  of  thought  to  the  rhythm  of  the  phe- 
nomenal world,  and  religion  becomes  a  religion  of  monism.] 
But  this  religion  does  not  spring  in  any  proper  sense  from  the 
notion  of  infinity,  it,  so  to  speak,  hooks  on  to  it  rather;  it  is 
another  example  of  man's  need,  if  not  to  personify,  at  least  to 
individualize  and  to  unify  the  infinite — so  great  is  man's  need 
to  project  his  individuality  by  main  force,  if  need  be,  into  the 
world  I  One  is  bent  on  endowing  this  great  material  body  that 
one  calls  nature  with  some  sort  of  a  soul,  one  is  bent  on  con- 
ceiving it  in  some  fashion  or  other  on  the  model  of  the  human 
organism  ;  and  is  not  that,  too,  a  species  of  anthropomorphism  ? 
It  is  only  later  that  human  thought,  carried  away  upon 
an  endless  voyage  of  discovery  analogous  to  the  migration 
.        of  a  primitive  people,  after  having  traversed  the 

The  conception  ^  r       r     '  ,      ,        , 

of  infinity  a  scien-  length  of  visible  spacc  and  leaped  the  bound  of 
tific  discovery.  j^g  ^^^,^  intellectual  horizon,  attains  the  presence 
of  the  unfathomable  ocean  of  the  infinite.  The  infinite  is  for 
the  human  mind  such  a  discovery  as  the  ocean  was  for  peoples 
who  had  wandered  to  its  shores  from  the  mountains  and  the 
plains.  Just  as  for  the  newborn  child  the  different  planes  of 
vision  are  indistinct  and  equally  near;  just  as  it  is  by  the  sense 
of  touch  that  one  learns  little  by  little  to  recognize  the  depth 
of  space  and  to  acquire  the  conception  of  distance  ;  just  as,  so 
to  speak,  it  is  with  one's  own  hand  that  one  opens  the  horizon 
before  one  ;  in  the  same  way  to  the  uncultivated  intelligence 
everything  seems  finite  and  limited  ;  and  it  is  only  by  moving 
forward  that  it  perceives  the  breadth  and  depth  of  its  domain. 
It  is  only  to  a  mind  upon  the  march  that  the  great  perspective 
of  the  infinite  is  thrown  open.  At  bottom  this  conception  of 
infinity  is  less  due  to  any  direct  experience  of  mere  things 
than  to  a  sense  of  one's  own  personal  activity,  to  a  belief  in 
the  perpetual  progress  open  to  human  thought ;  action,  as 
somebody  has  said,"  is  the  real  infinite  or  at  least  what  appears 
'Alfred  Fouillee,  La  liber  U  et  le  d^terminisme,  2e  par  tie. 


I 


38        GENESIS  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

I  as  such.     In  this  sense  it  may  be  admitted  that  there   is  in 
every   human  thought   some  vague  presentiment   of  infinity, 
for  there  is  a  consciousness  of  a  fund  of  activity  which  will 
not  be  exhausted  in  any  given  act  nor  in  any  given  thought; 
to   be   conscious  that   one   lives  is   thus   in   some   sort  to   be 
conscious  that  one  is  infinite:  illusion  or  reality,  this  notion 
forms  a  part  of  all  our  thoughts,  turns  up  in  every  proposition 
of  science  but  it  does  not  produce  science,  it  is,  on  the  con-  ' 
trary,  born  of  it ;  it  does   not  produce  religion,  which   is  the 
science   of  primitive   ages,  but   descends   from    it.      The   con- 
ception of  infinity  in  many  respects  resembles  the  ignorance 
of  Socrates,  the  refined  ignorance  which  was  really  in  disguise 
the  last  development  of  intelligence.     One  of  the  antiscientific 
traits  of  existing   religions   is  precisely  that  they  display  no 
sufficient  sentiment  of  our  ignorance  in  the   presence   of  the 
unknowable,  that  the  window  they  have  open  upon  the  infinite 
is  decidedly  too  contracted.     If,  as  we  have   seen,  religious 
physics  tends  little  by  little  to  transform  itself  into  a  meta- 
physics ;  if  the  gods  have  retreated  from  phenomenon  to  phe- 
nomenon, to  the   region   of  the   supersensible ;  if  heaven  has 
separated  itself  from  earth,  positive  religion  nevertheless  still 
lives  in  fear  of  throwing  open  to  human  thought  a  perspective 
really  infinite.     Its  eyes  are  always  fixed  upon  a  more  or  less 
determinate  being,  a  creator,  a  unity  in  which  the  spirit  may 
find  repose  and  safety  from  the  infinite.     Religious  metaphysics^ 
like   religious   physics,  has   remained   more  or  less  anthropo- 
morphic, and  rests  more  or  less  on  a  foundation  of  miracle ; 
a   foundation,  that   is  to  say,  which   limits   and   suspends  the 
exercise  of  intelligence.     And  as  the  object  of  adoration,  in 
the  majority  of  religions,  is  anything  rather  than  the  infinite, 
in  the  same  way  religious  faith  itself  leads  to  a  disposition  to 
arrest  the  march  of  thought  and  impose  upon  it  an  immutable 
barrier ;  it  leads  to  the  negation  of  infinity  and  of  the  indefinite 
progress  of  human  research.    Stricken  by  an  arrest  of  develop- 
ment the  majority  of  positive  religions  settled  once  for  all  on 
the  first  formulae  that  occurred  to  them  ;  they  erected  them 
linto  the  practical  object  of  a  cult  and  left  the  intangible  infinite 
unmolested  in  outer  vagueness. 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  39  »- 

Over   and    above    the    conception    of  the  infinite    there    is 

another  and  a  similar  notion  that   it   is  equally  impossible  to 

discover  at  the  roots  of  religious  thought  ;  it  is 
Conception  of  ,  ^         .         .  ,         1  •  r  1  •  Tr- 

ail all-embracing     that  of  unity  in   plurality,  of  totality.     This  pan- 

Tinity,  also  mod-     theistic,  monistic  concept  Von  Hartmann  believes 

>ern.  -. 

to  be  the  starting-point  of  all  religions.  As  a 
partial  disciple  of  Hegel  and  of  Schopenhauer,  Von  Hartmann 
inevitably  attributes  to  humanity  and  applies  to  the  interpre- 
tation of  history  the  formulae  of  his  dialectic.  "  Heno- 
theism,"  he  says,  "  is  founded  on  a  recognition  of  the 
positive  identity  at  bottom  of  all  the  divinities  of  nature ;  an 
identity  which  permits  one  to  adore  in  the  person  of  every  god 
individually,  and  principally  in  the  person  of  each  of  the  lead- 
ing gods,  absolute  divinity,  the  divine  god.  It  becomes 
therefore  a  matter  of  indifference,  in  some  measure,  under 
which  of  its  particular  aspects  one  worships  Divinity ;  when 
Indra  is  represented  imaginatively  in  the  form  of  a  buffalo,  the 
right  to  represent  him  immediately  afterward  in  the  form  of 
an  eagle,  or  a  falcon,  is  not  for  an  instant  abrogated  ;  when 
henotheism  offers  its  homage  to  the  supreme  deity  under  the 
name  of  Indra,  god  of  the  tempest,  it  does  not  incapacitate 
itself  from  adoring  him  a  moment  afterward  under  the  name 
of  Surya,  god  of  the  sun  ;  or  of  Rudra-Varuna,  god  of  the 
heavens.  Henotheism  does  not  owe  its  origin,  therefore,  to  a 
failure  in  the  association  of  ideas,  and  to  a  chance  forget- 
fulness,  an  incredible  lapse  of  memory  on  the  part  of  poly- 
theists,  when  they  were  addressing  their  homage  to  Surya  as 
the  supreme  god,  that  there  were  still  other  gods  in  existence 
who  were  adored  by  other  people,  and  even  sometimes  by 
themselves."  Imagine  primitive  humanity  ''  up"  in  the  latest 
developments- of  the  philosophy  of  monism,  with  its  symbolism 
and  its  notion  of  conceiving  diverse  powers  as  metaphorical 
manifestations  of  the  fundamental  unity  of  things  !  Even  for 
India,  the  home  of  pantheistic  metaphysics,  such  a  philosophy 
is  the  reluctant  product  of  a  civilization  alread}'  refined. 
People  never  take  the  first  steps  in  thought  by  means  of  ab- 
stractions. To  conceive  divinity  in  general,  and  subsequently 
represent  it  by  Indra,  Surya,  or  Rudra-Varuna,  as  by  aspects, 


40        GENESIS   OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

no  one  of  which  exhaust  the  totality  of  it — by  a  sort  of  Htany 
in  which  the  unity  of  things  appears  successively  under  diverse 
names  and  forms — implies  a  subtlety  of  intelligence  and  a 
mastery  of  the  henotheistic  conception  of  the  universe  that  is 
one  of  the  latest  products  of  metaphysical  speculation.  In  the 
beginning  the  form  and  figure  of  the  god  was  not  distinguished 
from  the  god  himself.  The  distinction  between  body  and  mind 
was  one  that  humanity  attained  with  great  difficulty  ;  and,  a. 
fortiori,  any  notion  of  a  unity  of  the  supreme  and  world  soul, 
existing  under  a  multiplicity  of  forms,  must  of  necessity  have 
made  its  appearance  much  later. 

Another  and  later  form  of  this  vague  idealism,  that   Max 

-Miiller  and  Von  Hartmann,  and  also  Strauss,  have  advocated,  is 

presented  in  the  theory  of  M.  Renan  concerning 

M.  Kenan's  reli-   ^|^g  u  rgligious  instinct,"  or  the  "  revelation  of  the 

gions  instinct.  °  ^ 

ideal." ^^y  religious  instinct  M.  Renan  under- 
stands something  mysterious  and  mystical,  a  heavenly  voice  in 
one's  bosom,  a  sudden  and  almost  sacred  revelation.  "  The 
construction  of  a  religion,"  he  cries,  "  is  for  humanity  what  the 
construction  of  a  nest  is  for  a  bird.  A  mysterious  instinct 
awakens  in  the  heart  of  a  being,  who  heretofore  has  lived 
totally  unaware  of  the  existence  in  himself  of  any  such  possi- 
bilities. The  bird  w'hich  has  never  itself  laid  an  egg  nor  seen 
an  egg  laid,  possesses  a  secret  foreknowledge  of  the  natural 
function  which  it  is  going  to  perform.  It  lends  itself  with  a 
species  of  pious  and  devoted  joy  to  an  end  which  it  does  not 
understand.  The  birth  of  the  religious  idea  in  man  is  some- 
thing quite  analogous.  Mankind  is  moving  forward  unsus- 
pectingly in  its  allotted  course,  and  suddenly  a  little  period  of 
silence  comes  upon  it,  a  lapse  of  sensation,  and  it  cries  to  itself  : 
'O  God,  how  strange  is  the  destiny  of  man!  Is  it  indeed 
true  that  I  exist?  What  is  the  world?  Am  I  the  sun,  and 
does  its  heat  and  light  feed  upon  my  heart?  .  .  .  O  Father,  I 
see  thee  beyond  the  clouds,'  and  the  noise  of  the  outer  world 
begins  again,  and  the  window,  open  out  upon  the  infinite, 
closes  once  more,  but,  from  that  moment,  a  being  to  all  appear- 
ance egoistic  will  perform  inexplicable  deeds  and  will  experience 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  41 

a  need  to  bow  the  knee  and  to  adore."     This  charming  passage, 
set  off  by  the  unction  and  the  ecstasy  of  Gerson  and  Fenelon, 
is  a  capital  instance  of  the  mental  attitude  of  a  number  of  people 
nowadays  who  are  endeavouring  to  transmute  a  reverence  for 
some  tottering  religion  into  a  reverence  for  the  religious  senti- 
ment.    Unhappily,  M.  Renan's  account  is  purely  mythological ; 
primitive   man  never  experienced  anything  of  the  kind.     M. 
Renan  completely  confounds  the  ideas  and  sentiments  which  he, 
the  historian  of  religion,  the  refined  thinker,  might  have  experi- 
enced  himself,  with  those  which  primitive  man    was    really 
subject  to.     This  species  of  supreme  doubt  on  the   matter  of 
our  own  existence  and  that  of  the  world,  this  sentiment  of  the 
strangeness  of  our  destiny,  this  communion  of  the  soul  with 
the   totality   of   nature,  this  outbreak    of  refined    sensibility, 
excited  and  tormented  by  modern  life,  possesses  nothing  in 
common    with    the  sentiment   of  primitive  religion,    with  its 
robust  and  crude  faith  reposing  upon  palpable  fact  and  visible 
miracle.     Mysticism,  far  from  explaining  the  origin  of  religion, 
marks   rather  its   period,   its   decomposition.  (.  A   mystic    is  a 
person,   who,   feeling  vaguely  the  insufficiency,  the  void,  of  a 
positive  and  finite  religion,  endeavours  to  compensate  himself 
for  the  narrowness  and  poverty  of  established  dogma  by  super- 
abundance of  sentiment.)   Mystics,  substituting  a  more  or  less 
personal  sentiment  and   spontaneous  outburst  of  emotion  for 
a  faith  in  authority,  have  always  played  the  role  in  history  of 
unconscious  heretics.     Sentimental  epochs  are  epochs  of  inac- 
tion, of  concentration  upon  one's  self,  of  comparative  independ- 
ence  of  thought.     On  the   contrary,  there    presided    nothing 
sentimental  or  meditative  at  the  origin  of  religion,  there  was  a 
stampede   simply    of  a  multitude    of    souls    in   mortal    terror 
or   hope,  and   no    such    thing    as    independence    of    thought ; 
it   is   less    of  sentiment  properly  so-called,   than  of  sensation 
and   of  action,  that  religions  have  been  born.     Primitive  reli- 
gion was  not  a  means  of  escape  out  of  this  world,  a  port-hole 
into  the  blue  ;  the  earliest  gods  were  not  in  the  least  ethereal, 
they  were  possessed  of  solid  muscles,  of  arms  capable  of  deal- 
ing blows.     To  explain   the  origin    of   primitive   beliefs   by  a 
nascent  idealism,  is  to  explain  them  by  their  precise  opposite. 


42        GEXES/S  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

One  becomes  an  idealist  when  one  is  on  the  point  of  ceasing 
to  beHeve  ;  after  having  rejected  a  multitude  of  alleged  realities 
one  consoles  one's  self  by  adoring,  for  a  time,  the  figments  of 
one's  own  imagination  ;  the  spirit  of  early  times  is  much  more 
positive,  as  the  Comtists  say.  A  preoccupation  with  the 
infinite,  a  divine  vertigo,  a  sentiment  of  the  abysses  of  life,  are 
wanting  to  man  in  early  times.  The  modern  mind  with  its 
intenser  vision  now  and  again  perceives  in  nature  an  endless, 
perspective  down  which  we  look  with  agony ;  we  feel  our- 
selves carried  forward  to  the  verge  of  a  chasm  ;  we  are  like 
navigators  who,  in  the  Antilles,  under  the  intense  light  of  the 
sun,  can  see  the  bottom  and  the  depth  of  the  sea  and  measure 
the  gulf  above  which  they  hang  suspended.  But  for  less  en- 
lightened intelligences  nature  is  opaque,  vision  is  limited  to 
the  surface  of  things,  and  one  floats  upon  the  rhythm  and 
pulse  of  the  sea  without  asking  what  lies  beneath. 

Before  the  need  for  mystical  belief  can  occur  to  one,  one 

must  have  been  reared  in  an  atmosphere  of  faith,  or  else  in  an 

atmosphere  of  doubt ;  and  both  these  states  of 

Alatephe-        mind    are    equally    unknown   to  the   earlier    and 
momenon.  ,  ,  ,  •  ^  ^    i 

simpler  races  of  humanity.     Or,  more  accurately, 
they  are  perfectly  acquainted  with  faith,  but  it  is  the  naive 
faith  of  eye  and  ear  ;  they  possess  the  perfect  confidence  that 
every    sentient    being  has  in  his  five  senses,  and  in  all  that 
there  is  nothing  religious  properly  so-called.     I  remember  the 
astonishment  I  felt  in  my  infancy  when  I  first  saw  the  words 
doubt  and  faith ;  it  was  in  some  verses,  and  the  poet  was  sing- 
ing, with  much  eloquence,  all  the  horrors  of  doubt.     I   per- 
fectly understood  what  it  was  to  doubt  a  fact,  or  to  believe  in 
it,    but    I  bothered   my  head  in  vain  to  discover  what  one 
meant  by  doubt  simply  :     What  was  there  so  terrible  about 
being  in  doubt  on  matters  with  which  one  was  insuf^ciently 
acquainted  ?    The  word  faith  was  equally  unintelligible  to  me, 
for  I  had  as  yet  no  conception  of  believing  in  anything  except 
(what  was  certain.     The  case  of  primitive  man  is  exactly  the 
same.      He  no  more  experiences  a  mystical  need  to  believe 
than  he  experiences  a  mystical  need  to  get  drunk  before  hav- 
ing  tasted    wine.     Religious    sentiment    does    not    make    its 


) 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  43 

appearance  in  him  suddenly,  docs  not  simply  step  out  on  the 
stage.  There  are  no  lacunas  in  the  human  soul,  it  is  a  prey  to 
invincible  continuity.  Such  a  sentiment  must  come  gradually 
by  a  slow  adaptation  of  the  spirit  to  the  inexact  ideas  supplied 
to  Qife  by  the  senses.  Man,  imagining  himself  to  live  in  the 
bosom  of  a  society  of  gods,  inevitably  accommodates  himself 
to  so  novel  a  habitat.  Every  society,  human  or  divine,  creates 
the  individual  member  in  its  own  image  ;  draft  the  labourer 
for  a  soldier,  let  the  villager  become  a  citizen,  they  acquire  of 
necessity  new  gestures  and  sentiments  which,  upon  their 
return  to  their  former  habitat,  they  once  more  in  a  measure 
lose.  The  case  is  inevitably  the  same  for  mankind  and  relig- 
ion. As  the  most  sociable  of  beings,  man  is  also  the  most 
readily  subject  to  the  influence  of  those  with  whom  he  lives  or 
believes  himself  to  live.  The  gods,  whom  we  create  more 
or  less  in  our  own  image,  thereupon,  by  an  inevitable  reaction, 
return  the  compliment.  A  religious  instinct,  such  as  M. 
Reiiat^describes,  is  in  a  large  part  the  work  of  this  sort  of  re- 
action ah,d  of  education  ;  if  it  possesses  profound  roots  in  our 
being,  the  reason  is  that  it  was  planted  in  us  in  our  infancy, 
that  it  speaks  to  us  with  the  voice  of  our  childhood,  and  takes 
us  bade  to  our  earliest  years  ;  often  a  word,  a  thought  with 
which  we  have  been  struck  at  some  former  time,  without, 
however,  having  understood  it,  unexpectedly  reawakens  in  us, 
reverberates  in  our  memory  ;  it  is  but  an  echo,  and  it  appeals 
to  us  as  if  it  were  a  voice.  The  role  played  by  heredity  in  the 
formation  of  one's  character  has  been  noticeably  exaggerated  ; 
the  influence  of  education  is  at  the  present  day  not  estimated 
at  its  full  value.'  Even  among  animals,  instinct  amounts  to 
little  without  education.  A  bird,  no  doubt,  does  not  actually 
need  to  see  an  egg  laid  to  acquit  itself  with  "  devotion  "  of  that 
new  function ;  but  when  it  is  a  question  of  building  the  nest, 
the  case  is  not  so  simple  :  birds  reared  in  a  cage,  who  have 
never  seen  a  nest,  are  often  at  a  loss  what  to  do  ;  .  instinct 
whispers  indeed  to  them  still,  but  its  voice  is  no  longer  clear, 
no  definite  image  of  the  ideal  nest  presents  itself  to  their  eyes. 
Isature's  "  devotion  "  is  at  fault.     Add  that  these  instincts,  so 

'  See  the  authors  Morale  anglaise  conteinporaitie,  ie  par  tie. 


44        GEA'£S/S   OF  KEUGIOiVS  IX  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

"mysterious"  in  M.  Rcnan's  opinion,  act  on  the  individual 
by  means  of  a  somewhat  gross  mechanism,  and  that  it  suffices 
to  tamper  with  the  mechanism,  to  excite  the  instinct  or  to 
suspend  it.  To  transform,  for  example,  a  capon  into  a  setting 
hen,  it  suffices  simply  to  pluck  the  feathers  off  the  belly  ;  it  ^len 
squats  upon  eggs — or  upon  pebbles — with  pleasure.  Really 
there  is  mystery  enough  in  nature  without  going  out  of  one's 
way  to  add  to  it;  it  is  not  philosophic  to  trace  everything  back  to 
instinct,  and  then  presently  to  regard  these  instincts  as  uncon- 
scious intentions,  and  in  these  intentions  to  see  the  proof  of  a 
plan,  and  in  this  plan  the  proof  of  a  god.  With  a  logic  so 
accommodating  as  that,  M.  Kenan  might  well  find  in  the 
religious  instinct  a  peremptory  demonstration  of  the  existence 
of  God. 

In   our  judgment  there  was,  in   the   beginning,    no    other 

instinct   involved   than   the    instinct   of  self-preservation,  and 

The  only  in-      the  instii^^ct  of  sociality,  which    is  closely  allied 

stincts  involved  the  ^o  the  former.     More  than  that,  the  intellectual 

instincts  of  self-  ,  i   •    i  •      •  ^  •  i  •    j 

preservation  and  procedure  upon  which  primitive  men  relied  was 
sociaWlity.  ,^q  other  than  a  simple  association  by  contiguity 

and  similarity,  together  with  such  reasoning  by  induction  or 
analogy  as  is  inseparably  bound  up  with  association.  This 
species  of  intellectual  procedure  is  precisely  that  which,  in  its 
highest  stages,  gives  birth  to  the  scientific  explanation  of 
things.  Religion,  as  we  shall  show  presently,  originates  as 
science  does,  in  a  certain  astonishment  that  an  intelligent 
being  experiences  in  the  face  of  certain  phenomena  and  in  the 
fears  and  desires  which  result  therefrom,  and  in  the  consequent 
voluntary  reaction. 

11.    Herbert  Spencer,  who  is  almost  at  the  antipodes  from 
Max  Muller,  by  a  conscious  return   to  euhemerism  regards  the 
gods  simply  as  heroes  transfigured  in  the  memo- 
SpS'agiee  in    rics  of  their  descendants,   reduces  religion  to  an 
rejecting  the  ancestor  worship,  and  thus  implicitly  denies  that 

ypo  esis.  ^  presentiment  of  the  divine  or  of  the  infinite  has 
played  any  part  in  its  origin.  Nevertheless,  Max  Muller  and 
Herbert  Spencer,  in  spite  of  such  divergences,  agree  in  reject- 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  45 

ing  the  theory  which  attributes  the  birth  of  religion  to  the 
mingled  astonishment  and  fear  of  an  intelligent  being  in  the 
face  of  certain  natural  phenomena,  and  to  the  need  of  expla- 
nation and  protection  that  he  experiences  before  what  is 
puisant  and  powerful. 

\Vfe  willingly  concede  to  Mr.  Spencer  that  ancestor  worship 
has  played  its  part  in  the  genesis  of  human  beliefs  ;    heroes 
have  been  deified  not  only  after  their  death,  but 
rel^ingtiUl       ^ven  in  their  lifetime.     But  why  rely  upon  this 
number  of  single  principle  for  the  explanation  of  so  complex 

principes,  ^  phenomenon  as  religion?     Why  wish  to  see  in 

every  detail  a  realization  of  it,  even  when  no  positive  fact 
seems  to  authorize  one's  doing  so  ?  Spencer's  system,  which 
resolves  the  whole  body  of  our  beliefs  into  one,  reminds  one 
a  little  of  Genesis,  and  of  the  theory  that  all  mankind  are 
descended  from  the  first  couple,  Adam  and  Eve,  after  Eve  had 
herself  been  fashioned  out  of  one  of  Adam's  ribs.  If  it  is  an 
excellent  characteristic  of  Mr.  Spencer's  to  look  for  the  origin 
of  heterogeneous  and  later  belief*  in  some  vague  and  homo- 
geneous conception,  this  primitive  conception  must  at  least  be 
suf^ciently  ample  to  be  able  fairly  to  accommodate  within  its 
own  limits  the  whole  body  of  its  successors,  and  Mr.  Spencer 
is  somewhat  too  much  inclined  to  confound  the  homogeneity 
of  a  notion  with  its  amplitude  ;  it  is  only  by  a  prodigy  of  arti- 
fice that  he  succeeds  in  extracting  from  his  principle  a  com- 
pletely furnished  religious  theory  of  the  universe. 

Mr.  Spencer  endeavours,  first,  to  prove,  by  three  examples, 
that  a  cult  for  the  dead  exists  among  three  tribes  of  savages 
very    low    in    the    scale    of    civilization    and    not 
theory  wantonly     possessed,  SO    far   as    has  been   observed,  of  any 
clever.  Other     form     of    religion  ;    he    thereupon    infers 

that  a  cult  for  the  dead  is  the  earliest  form  of  worship.  These 
examples  are  open  to  discussion,  but  even  if  they  were  not,  it 
in  nowise  follows  that  all  other  forms  of  religion  spring  from 
a  cult  for  the  dead.  Death  is,  no  doubt,  so  frequent  and 
brutal  a  fact  that  it  early  engages  the  attention  of  primitive 
peoples;  some  germ  of  the  notion  of  burial  maybe  discovered 
among  animals.     Ants  have  frequently  been    observed,  after 


46        GEXESIS  OF  KELIGIOA'S  IN  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

their  battles,  carrying  off  the  corpses  of  their  soldiers  ;  but  from 
the  fact  that  human  intelligence  must   necessarily  have  been 
entiacied  in  one  direction,  does  it  follow  that  it  can  have  been 
en<Ta<jed  in   no  other?     For  the    manufacture   of  a  god   Mr. 
Spencer   requires   first   a   corpse,  second   the   conception   of  a 
spiritual  double  of  the  corpse,  third  a  belief  that  this  spirit  is 
capable   of    inhabiting,   not    only   the   body,  that   it  has  just 
quitted,  but  another  body,  an  inanimate  effigy,  a  bee,  a  stone, 
etc.      What    a    complication!      One    knows    Mr.    Spencer's 
ingenious  device  for  explaining  tree-worship;    sometimes   he 
would  have  us  conceive  trees  as  the  resting-places  of  departed 
souls,  who  for  some  reason  or  other  have  taken  a  notion  to 
inhabit  them;  sometimes  he  would  have  us  rely  on  a  theory 
of  misinterpreted  legend  :  a  tribe  that  in  former  years  inhabited 
the    forest,  a  tribe   cone  from   the  forest,  ultimately  believes 
itself  to  be  descended   from  trees,  ultimately  believes  that  its 
ancestors  were  trees.     Really,  all  that  strikes  us  as  particularly 
artificial.     A  tall  tree  is  venerable  in  and  of  itself.     A  certain 
"sacred  horror"  is  an  essential   attribute   of  a  dense  forest. 
Night   and    obscurity  play  a   notable   part  in   the   genesis   of 
religion ;    well,   a    forest    is    the    very    incarnation    of    eternal 
night  with  its  element  of  the  unforeseen,  its  terrors,  the  sigh  of 
the  wind  in  the  branches  like  a  voice,  the  cry  of  the  wild  beast 
which  seems  sometimes  to  come  from  the  trees  themselves. 
And  what  intense  and  silent  life  in  and  about  a  tree,  if  one  but 
studies  it  closely  !     An  animal  does  not  observe  with  sufficient 
attention    to    see    plants    grow    and    the    sap    rise ;    but    how 
astonished  man  must   have  been  when  first   he  remarked  that 
the  roots  of  trees  make  their  way  even  into  rock,  that  their 
trunks  break  all  bonds  :  that  they  rise  year  by  year,  and  are  at 
the  very  beginnings  of  their  maturity  at  an  age  when  man  is 
old  I     Forest  vegetation  is  alive,  but  with  a  life  so  different 
from  ours  that  it  must  naturally  have  filled  our  ancestors  with 
surprise  and  reverence.     Remember,  too,  that  the  sap  of  cer- 
tain  trees,  when   it   flows  from  a   wound,  is   of  the  colour  of 
blood,  or  of  the  colour  and  almost  of  the  taste  of  milk. 

Similarly,   why   resort    to   an    ancestor  worship   to   explain 
zoolatry?      What    is    more    natural,    for    example,    than    the 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSIC. 

universal  veneration  for  the  snake?     This  mysterious  creature 
which    ghdes    away  among    the    shadows,    appears,    and    dis- 
appears,   and    carries    with   it   power  of  life  and 
Superfluity  of         i       ^i    -i      /->       •       .        i        r  .  ,  , 

effort  to  explain      death?     Ur   mstead    of    a    serpent,  consider  the 

zoolatrybyances-   Hon,   or  any  Other  ferocious  animal.     He  makes 

tor  worship. 

his  appearance  in  a  country  and  creates  havoc 
among  the  flocks ;  one  pursues  him,  but  for  some  reason  or 
other  no  shot  reaches  him ;  he  is  invulnerable.  He  becomes 
increasingly  audacious  and  terrible  ;  he  disappears  for  weeks 
together,  nobody  knows  where ;  he  reappears  suddenly, 
nobody  knows  why ;  he  defies  the  hunters  with  the  majesty 
that  wild  beasts  sometimes  show,  in  perfect  consciousness  of 
their  power.     Behold!  a  veritable  god. 

It  is  well  known  that  the  aborigines  worshipped  the  horses 
wliich  the  Spaniards  imported  into  America ;  according  to 
Prescott,  they  preferred  to  attribute  the  invention  of  firearms 
to  the  horses  rather  than  to  the  Spaniards.  The  fact  is 
simply  that  the  Spaniards  were  men  like  themselves,  and  that 
the  aborigines  took  their  measure  accordingly ;  but  an 
unknown  animal  came  to  them  armed  with  an  indefinite 
power.  Men  adore  nothing  but  what  they  are  comparatively 
ignorant  of,  and  it  is  for  that  reason,  whatever  Mr.  Spencer 
may  say,  that  nature,  so  long  imperfectly  known,  afforded  to 
religion  a  more  generous  and  inexhaustible  aliment  than 
humanity. 

At  bottom  what  Mr.  Spencer  regards  as  the  true  confirma- 
tion of  his  doctrine  is  the  relation  it  bears  to  the  rest  of  his 
Narrowness  and  system  ;    it    is    for   him    an    example    simply    of 

insufficiency  of       a    universal    law,    a    consequence     of    evolution. 

Spencer's  formula.      \  j  ■  i.      1.1  •      j       i.   •  .  i  •  ,. 

^  According  to  this  doctrine,  everything  seems  to 

spring   from   a  primordial   unity,  from  a  single  homogeneous 

belief — the  belief  in  a  power  more  or  less  vague,  exercised  by 

the    souls    of    the    dead ;    this    belief,    once    given,  undergoes 

a   complete    series    of    integrations   and    differentiations,   and 

ultimately    becomes    a    belief     in    the     regular    action    of    an 

unknown  and  universal  power.     Mr.  Spencer  seems  to  us  to 

be  right  in  pitching  upon  the  one  homogeneous  belief  from 

which    all    others    arise    by  a   process    of   evolution;    but   the 


48        GEXESIS   OF  RELIGIONS  IX  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

formula  of  this  belief  that  he  presents  us  with  seems  to  us 
alto<jether  too  narrow  and  insufificient.  If  one  wishes  to  dis- 
cover  the  idea  which  dominates  both  the  cult  for  the  dead  and 
the  cult  for  the  gods,  one  will  find  in  it  a  natural  persuasion 
that  nothing  is  absolutely  and  definitively  inanimate,  that 
everything  lives  and  possesses,  therefore,  intentions  and 
volitions.  Man  has  deified  the  phenomena  of  nature,  as  he  has 
immortalized  his  ancestors,  for  the  sole  and  only  reason  that, 
as  a  living  being  possessed  of  a  will,  the  most  difficult  thing  in 
the  beginning  for  him  to  understand  is  the  invincible  deter- 
minism and  absolute  inertia  of  the  phenomena  of  the  exter- 
nal world. 

The  adoration  of  natural  forces,  conceived  as  more  or  less 
analogous  to  powerful  living  beings  possessed  of  volition,  has 
been  denominated  sometimes  fetichism,  some- 
feticMS.Tom.  times  naturism.  Messrs.  Muller  and  Spencer 
monly  a  play  on  are  afrreed  that  fetichism  is  one  of  the  later 
^°^  ^'  forms  of  religion,  and  decline  to  treat  it  as  primi- 

tive.    On  both  sides  of  this  interesting  discussion  one  deside- 
ratum seems  to  us  to  be  beautifully  conspicuous  by  its  absence, 
namely,  precision  of  formula  and  agreement  as  to  the  exact 
sense  of  terms.     The  words  fetich,  atiimate  being,  i7ianimate 
being,  and  so  forth,  seem  to  us  to  have  given  rise  to  a  number 
of  misunderstandings,  on    the    part    both  of    those    who    are 
defending  the  fetich  theory  and  of  those  who  are  attacking 
it.     Let  us  cite  some  examples :   Max   Muller  has  undertaken 
to  define  the  word  fetichism  ;  as  was  natural  for  a  philologist 
he  went  in  search  of  an  etymology,  and  he  found,  relying  on 
Tylor,  that  fetichism  (from  the  Portuguese/<r///V^,  derived  from 
the   Latin  factitius,   artificial)  could  not  designate  anything 
but  a  superstitious  reverence  felt  or  shown  for  certain  knick- 
knacks  that  possessed  no  apparent  title  to  any  such  honour- 
able distinction.     The  definition  of  Tylor  and  of  Max  Muller 
may  be  philologically  exact;  unhappily,   none  of   the  philoso- 
phers who  have    regarded  fetichism  as  the   basis    of  religion 
have   ever   employed   that   word    in    the  narrow  and    rigorous 
sense   which   Max   Muller   puts  upon    it;  they   understood  by 
'  See  our  Morale  auglaise  conteviporaine,  p.  579. 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  49 

it,  as  de  Brosses  and  A.  Comte  did,  the  primitive  tendency 
to  conceive  external  objects  as  animated  by  a  life  analogous 
to  that  of  man.  They  comprehended  also,  under  the  title  of 
fetichism,  what  Max  MCiller  distinguishes  from  it  so  carefully 
under  the  names  of  physiolatry,  or  the  worship  rendered  to 
natural  objects  other  than  gimcracks,  and  of  zoolatry,  or  the 
worship  of  animals.  The  result  is  that  Max  Miiller's  refuta- 
tions really  do  not  concern  the  doctrine  which  they  are 
designed  to  combat,  and  ov^er  against  which  he  sets  up  his 
own  doctrine.  Similarly  in  regard  to  the  definitions  of  ^I. 
Reville.'  To  demonstrate  that  a  cult  for  knick-knacks  is  not 
the  primitive  and  unique  original  of  all  human  religions  does 
not  help  us  forward  ;  the  problem  remains  where  it  was.  Let 
us  consider,  therefore,  not  the  words,  but  the  theory  itself  of 
the  animation  of  nature,  and  let  us  examine  the  objections 
that  have  been  urged  against  it. 

According  to  [Messrs.  Spencer  and   MCiller  the  savage   may 
legitimately   be    compared    to   a  child    who  mistakes  a  well- 
Children  and       dressed  doll  for  a  living  being,  or  who    punishes 

even  animals  dis-    a  door    against    which    he     has    stumbled;    the 

tiiifiruish,  bBtwBBU 

animate  and  in-      savage    is    not    SO  naive.     The  very  child  is   far 

animate.  from  possessing  all  the  naivete  that  is  ascribed 

to  him,  in  general  he  perfectly  distinguishes  between  the 
animate  and  the  inanimate ;  and  when  he  talks  to  his  play- 
things, and  conducts  himself  before  them  as  if  thev  were  alive 
he  is  not  a  dupe  of  his  own  words,  he  is  composing  a  diminu- 
tive drama  simply,  in  which  he  is  an  actor;  he  is  making 
poetry  and  not  mythology.    "  If  his  doll  should  step  up  to  him 

'Fetichism,  M.  Reville  also  says,  is  logically  a  later  belief.  "A  fetich  is  a 
vulgar  object,  possessing  no  value  in  itself,  but  which  a  negro  preserves,  venerates, 
adores,  because  he  believes  that  it  is  the  ihuelling place  of  a  spirit.  And  the  choice 
of  the  said  object  is  not  absolutely  arbitrary.  A  fetich  possesses  this  very  special 
distinction,  that  it  is  the  property  of  the  person  who  adores  it.  It  is  in  this 
element  of  individual  ownership — ownership  by  the  tribe  or  the  family — that  the 
difference  clearly  appears  between  the  object  of  a  naturist  religion,  and  tiie  fetich, 
properly  so  called.  However  humble  it  may  be — tree,  rock,  or  rivulet — the  first  is 
independent,  is  accessible  to  all,  to  strangers  as  to  indigenes,  on  the  sole  condition 
that  they  conform  to  the  exigencies  of  the  ritual  or  the  cult.  The  sun  shines  for 
everybody,  the  mountain  is  accessible  to  all  who  scale  its  sides,  the  spring  refreshes 
the  passer-by,  whatever  be  his  tribe  ;  the  very  tree  which  rises  in  the  midst  of  the 


5°        G£.V£S/S  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE   SOCIETIES. 

and  bite  him,  he  would  be  the  first  person  to  be  astonished."' 
In  the  same  way,  a  dog  plays  with  a  stick — the  comedy  of 
the  chase — he  bites  it,  he  tears  it  into  pieces,  he  warms  to 
his  game,  which  is  still  for  him,  when  all  is  said,  no  more  than 
a  game.  Even  the  famous  example  of  a  child's  rage  at 
inanimate  objects  against  which  it  has  stumbled,  an  example 
which  has  done  service  in  the  pages  of  all  those  who  have 
written  on  religion,^  is  seriously  damaged  by  Mr.  Spencer; 
according  to  him,  mothers  and  nurses  suggest  to  the  child 
absurd  ideas  which,  but  for  them,  it  would  not  have  ;  it  is 
they,  who,  if  it  has  hurt  itself  against  an  inanimate  object, 
affect  to  be  angry;  and,  to  distract  its  attention  from  the 
pain,  endeavour  to  excite  its  anger  also.  The  little  comedy 
of  the  inanimate  object  is  one  in  which  the  child  displays  no 
initiative.  In  any  event  the  example  deals  with  an  ill-observed 
psychological  phenomenon,  which,  for  the  present,  can  be 
employed  to  support  no  theory  whatever. 

Similarly,  according    to  Mr.  Spencer,  no  employment  can 

be    made    of    the    mistakes    committed    by  a  savage    in  the 

Savages  mis-       presence  of  certain  complex  products  of  the  arts 

taking  a  watch,      -y-)(j  ^f  civilization;  he  believes  these  objects  to 

ftp    for  /iTUTnutf* 

lendsnosup-  be  alive,  but  how  should  he  do  otherwise?  If 
port  to  fetichism.  }^g  jg  deceived,  it  is  rather  due  to  the  degree 
of  perfection  attained  by  our  art  than  to  any  defect  in 
his  own  intelligence.  When  the  indigenes  of  New  Zeal- 
and saw  Cook's  ship,  they  took  it  for  a  sailing  whale. 
Anderson  relates  that  the  Bushmen  supposed  that  a  carriage 
was  an  animate  being  and  must  be  provided  with  fodder ;  the 
complexity  of  its  structure,  the  symmetry  of  its  parts,  its 
moving  wheels,  naturally  suggested  no  fragment  of  their  own 
experience    of    inanimate    things.      Just    so   the    Esquimaux 

desert  asks  of  the  traveller  some  mark  of  deference,  and  does  not  trouble  itself 
about  his  origin.  One  cannot  appropriate  a  natural  object.  It  is  otherwise  with 
a  fetich.  Once  adopted  by  a  family,  it  is  in  some  sort  in  the  service  of  that 
family  and  has  nothing  to  do  with  others."  This  definition  of  fetichism  is  quite 
special,  and  in  no  wise  concerns  primitive  fetichism,  conceived  as  an  ascription 
of  something  analogous  to  the  human  will  in  all  inanimate  things. 

'  Spencer,  Principles  of  Sociology. 

*  See,  among  others,  M.  Vacherot,  La  religion. 

\ 


\ 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  51 

believed  that  a  music-box  and  a  hand-organ  were  Hving 
beings.  All  these  errors  are  in  a  measure  rational,  but  they 
are  errors  of  a  kind  that  really  primitive  man  would  have  no 
opportunity  to  commit.  To  suppose  that  he  was  dominated 
by  a  natural  tendency  to  assign  life  to  things  which  were  not 
alive,  to  imagine  that  he  went  out  of  his  way  to  confound 
things  which  animals  of  a  lesser  degree  of  intelligence  per- 
fectly distinguish,  is  to  invert  the  whole  course  of  evolution. 

There  are,  in  Mr.  Spencer's  opinion,  still  other  prejudices 

relative  to  primitive  man  from  which  we  should  free  ourselves. 

We  believe  him  to  be  voluntarily  and  incessantly 

Primitive  man         „«„j  ^i  j  •/■-•         •i.ix.i  /         r 

incurious.  occupied,  as  the  modern  mfant  is,  with  the  zvliy  of 

things;  we  fancy  him  perpetually  endeavouring  to 
satisfy  a  restless  curiosity.  Unhappily,  if  we  are  to  trust  our 
experience  of  the  lower  races  of  man,  it  appears  that  the  senti- 
ment of  curiosity  decreases  directly  as  one  approaches  the 
savage  state.  To  awaken  curiosity  demands  surprise  ;  Plato 
was  correct  in  regarding  astonishment  as  the  beginning  of  phi- 
losophy. Well,  what  produces  astonishment  is  an  unexpected  ) 
breach  in  the  chain  of  causation  ;  but  for  a  primitive  intelligence  | 
which  has  not  yet  achieved  scientific  maturity,  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  natural  causation  and  no  such  thing  as  rational  sur- 
prise.' The  Fuegians,  the  Australians,  show  the  most  complete 
indifference  in  the  presence  of  matters  for  them  absolutely  new 
and  essentially  surprising.  According  to  Dampier,  the  Aus- 
tralians whom  he  took  on  board  paid  no  attention  to  any- 
thing in  the  vessel  except  what  was  given  them  to  eat.  The 
ven,'  mirrors  did  not  succeed  in  astonishing  savages  of  inferior 
race  ;  they  were  amused  with  them,  but  evinced  neither 
surprise  nor  curiosity.  When  Park  inquired  of  the  negroes, 
"  What  becomes  of  the  sun  at  night  ?  Is  it  the  same  sun 
that  rises  the  next  day  or  another?" — they  made  him  no 
reply  and  found  the  question  puerile.  Spix  and  Martins 
report,  that  the  minute  one  begins  to  question  a  Brazil  Indian 
about  his  language  he  shows  signs  of  impatience,  complains 
of  headache,  and  proves  himself  incapable  of  mental  labour. 
Similarly  the  Abipones,  when  they  find  themselves  unable  to 

'  Spencer,  Principles  of  Sociology, 


52        GEA'ESIS   OF  KELIGIOXS  I.V  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

understand  anything  at  a  glance,  soon  become  fatigued  and 
cry.  "  What,  after  all,  does  it  amount  to?"  "  It  seems,"  Sir 
John  Lubbock  says,  "as  if  the  mind  of  the  savage  lives  in  a 
perpetual  come  and  go  of  pure  feebleness,  incapable  of  fixing 
itself  upon  anything.  He  accepts  what  he  sees  as  an  animal 
does  ;  he  adapts  himself  to  the  world  about  him  spontane- 
ously ;  astonishment,  admiration,  the  very  conditions  of  wor- 
sliip  are  above  him.  Accustomed  to  the  regularity  of  nature 
he  patiently  awaits  the  succession  of  such  phenomena  as  he 
has   observed,  mechanical  habit  overbears  all   intelligence  in 

h» » 
im. 

In  effect,  according  to  Mr.  Spencer,  all  of  the  observed  facts 
upon  which  the  old  fetichistic  theory  was  founded  are  charge- 
able with    inexactitude ;    they    were  taken  from 

Inexactitude  of    ^^^  narratives  of  the  earlier  travellers,  who  rarely 

facts  on  which  the  ^ 

fetich  theory  i9       came    into    contact  with  any    but    races  already 

founded.  debauched  and  half  civilized.     Little  by  little,  he 

says,  the  idea  that  fetichism  is  primordial  took  possession  of 
men's  minds  and,  as  prepossession  constitutes  nine-tenths  of 
belief,  it  has  rested  master  of  the  field  almost  without  a  con- 
test ;  I  myself  accepted  it,  although,  as  I  remember,  with  a 
vague  feeling  of  discontent.  This  discontent  became  positive 
doubt  when  I  was  better  informed  with  regard  to  the  ideas  of 
the  savage.  From  doubt  I  passed  to  negation  when  I  had 
once  tabulated  the  whole  body  of  the  facts  relating  to  the 
most  deijraded  races. 

Mr.  Spencer  undertakes  even  to  demonstrate  a  priori  the 

falsity  of  the  fetich  theory.     What,  he  asks,  is  a  fetich  ?    An 

inanimate   object   supposed  to    contain  a  being, 

A  priori  demon-       r        i  •    i       ■  i  j  i.    i.    i 

stration  of  the  of  which  the  senses  do  not  take  cognizance ; 
priority  of  anim-  guch  a  conception  is  extremely  complex,  and 
above  the  reach  of  primitive  minds.  The  savage 
is  so  incapable  of  abstraction  that  he  can  neither  conceive  nor 
express  a  colour  as  distinct  from  some  coloured  object,  a  light 
as  distinct  from  some  light  object — star  or  fire,  an  animal 
which  shall  be  neither  a  dog  nor  a  cow  nor  a  horse  ;  and  he  is 
asked  to  imagine  an  animate  being  in  the  heart  of  an  inani- 
mate thing,  an  invisible  power  in  the  heart  of  a  visible  object, 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  53 

in  effect,  a  soul !  Nothing  less  than  the  conception  of  a  soul, 
in  Mr.  Spencer's  judgment,  will  serve  the  fetich  hypothesis;  ] 
and  primitiv^e  man  certainly  could  not  attain  the  notion  of  a 
soul  by  mere  observation  of  nature.  Before  projecting  this 
complex  idea  into  the  heart  of  things,  he  must  previously 
have  constructed  it,  and  as  preparation  for  that,  Mr.  Spencer 
says,  he  must  have  supplied  himself  with  a  theory  of  death, 
and  conceived  the  mind  as  surviving  the  body,  and  therefore 
as  separable  from  the  body  and  as  the  motive  principle  of  the 
body.  It  is  to  his  notions  on  death  that  man  must  look  for 
any  conception  of  life  in  inanimate  nature.  Every  fetich  is  a 
spirit,  no  spirit  can  be  for  a  primitive  intelligence  anything 
else  than  the  spirit  of  someone  who  is  dead.  Necessarily, 
therefore,  a  cult  for  the  dead,  spiritism,  must  precede  fetichism  ; 
the  latter  is  no  more  than  an  extension,  a  by-product,  of  the 
former.' 

III.  Such  is  the  theory  of  Mr.  Spencer.     And  he  would  be  — 
right   if   the   partisans  of    primitive  fetichism  understood    by 

c         ...   1-   fetich,  as  he  does,  a  material  object  at  the  heart  of 

Spencer  s  attack  '  ■'  _ 

not  against  a  vital  which  the  adorer  imagines  the  existence  of  a 
^P°*"  mysterious  agent  distinct  from  this  object  itself. 

But  is  this  notion  of  distinctness  a  necessary  part,  at 
least  in  the  beginning,  of  fetichism,  or,  as  one  says  to-day, 
of  naturism  ?  Imagine  a  rock  which  should  detach  itself 
unexpectedly  from  the  mountain  side,  and  roll  down  to 
the  hut  of  a  savage  ;  it  stops  suddenly  just  as  it  is  on 
the  point  of  crushing  his  dwelling,  it  remains  there  pendent, 
menacing,  to  all  appearance  ready  at  an  instant's  notice  to 
begin  rolling  again  ;  the  savage  fairly  trembles  at  the  sight  of 
it.  Do  you  believe  that  he  needs  really  to  suppose  the 
presence  of  some  foreign  agent,  of  a  soul,  of  an  ancestral  spirit 
in  that  stone  to  regard  it  as  an  object  of  fear  and  of  respect? 
Not  at  all.  It  is  the  rock  itself  which  constitutes  his  fetich, 
it  is  to  the  rock  that  he  bows  ;  he  venerates  it  precisely 
because  he  is  far  from  supposing  it,  as  you  do,  essentially  and 
eternally  inert  and  passive  ;  he  ascribes  to  it  possible  inten- 

'  Mr.  Spencer's  Principles  of  Sociology. 


54        GENESIS  OF  RELIGIONS  hV  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

tions,  a  maleficent  or  beneficent  will.  He  says  to  himself: 
"  It  is  asleep  to-day,  but  it  was  awake  yesterday  ;  yesterday  it 
could  have  killed  me,  and  it  did  not  want  to."  Let  the 
lii;htning  strike  a  savage's  hut  three  times  in  succession 
within  a  month,  and  he  will  easily  recognize  that  the  thunder 
is  ill-disposed  toward  him  and,  quite  without  any  preliminary 
need  of  personification  in  the  way  of  endowing  it  with  a 
departed  soul,  he  will  set  about  adoring  the  thunder  and  con- 
juring it  not  to  do  him  harm.  Mr.  Spencer  does  not  perceive 
that,  at  the  very  beginning  of  his  exposition,  he  ascribes  to 
primitive  man  a  conception  of  nature  analogous  to  the  abstract 
mechanism  of  Descartes.  Such  a  conception  once  pre-sup- 
posed,  it  is  plain  that  to  regard  an  object  or  a  natural  phe- 
nomenon as  the  centre  of  a  cult,  some  new  conception  must 
be  added  to  it,  and  this  new  conception  may  well  be  that  of 
a  spirit.  Mr.  Spencer,  as  he  himself  admits,  looks  upon  fetich- 
ism  as  quite  analogous  to  modern  spiritualism,  which  sees  in 
turning  tables  and  oscillating  chairs  the  work  of  disembodied 
souls ;  but  nothing  could  be  more  arbitrary  than  this  analogy. 
It  is  quite  impossible  that  primitive  man  should  stand  in  the 
same  position  that  we  do  in  the  face  of  any  natural  phe- 
nomenon ;  as  he  does  not  possess  the  modern  metaphysical 
idea  of  inert  matter,  he  experiences  no  need  to  invent  an 
indwelling  spirit  before  he  can  ascribe  volition  to  it.  If  a 
savage  should  see  a  table  turn,  he  would  say  simply  that  the 
table  was  turning,  no  doubt,  because  it  wanted  to  turn,  and  that, 
for  him,  would  be  the  end  of  it ;  and  if  by  chance  it  should  be 
a  matter  of  interest  to  him  whether  the  table  turned  or  not, 
it  would  immediately  become  a  fetich  to  him.  The  concep- 
tion of  a  fetich  does  not  in  the  least  presuppose,  as  Mr.  Spencer 
maintains,  the  conception  of  a  soul  ;  there  is  no  such  meta- 
physical element  in  fetichism,  and  it  is  precisely  on  that 
account  that  this  form  of  religion  must  have  preceded  spirit- 
ism, which  is  always  founded  on  a  more  or  less  rudimentary 
metaphysics. 

For  animals  and  savages,  as  for  very  young  children,  nature 
is  absolutely  the  opposite  of  what  it  appears  to  be  nowadays 
to  the  scholar  and  the  philosopher  :   for  them  it  is  not  a  cold 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  55 

and  neuter  habitat,  in  which   man  alone    possesses    aims  and 

bends    everything  to    the   fulfihnent  of   his  wishes  ;  it   is  not 

,    a   physical   laboratory   full   of    inert    instruments 

for  savages  and  >■      ■'  ^  ■' 

children  nature  a  for  the  scrvlce  of  man.  On  the  contrary,  nature 
■^""^^y*  is  a   society;  primitive    peojDle    see   intention   in 

everything.  Friends  or  enemies  surround  them  on  all  sides  ; 
the  struggle  for  existence  is  one  long  pitched  battle  with 
imaginary  allies  against  adversaries  not  infrequently  only  too 
real.  How  should  they  understand  that  there  is  a  profound 
unity  in  nature  which  rigidly  excludes  from  the  chain  of 
things  anything  like  individuality  or  independence  ?  The 
only  cause  of  movement  with  which  they  are  acquainted  is 
desire  ;  they  reckon  desire  or  intention  as  the  cause  of  every 
movement  in  nature,  as  of  every  movement  in  their  fellow- 
men  and  in  animals  ;  and  the)'  conceive  that  the  intentions 
of  all  of  the  diverse  beings  by  which  they  find  themselves 
surrounded  may  be  equally  modified  by  prayer  and  offerings. 
Their  conception  of  nature  is  at  once  anthropomorphic  and 
sociomorphic,  as  is  subsequently  their  conception  of  God. 
Nothing  is  more  natural  and  inevitable  than  this  fashion  of 
modeling  the  external  world  on  the  internal,  and  the  relations 
of  things  on  the  relations  of  men. 

If  the  word  fetichism   is  too  vague  to  designate  this  primi- 
tive state  of  mind  anci  gives  rise  to  confusion,  take  another 

word  ;    if  the   word  pantJielism  were  not  a  little 

Panthelisra.  ,        ,  .  ,11,.  ,  1  •        ,  r 

barbarous   it  would   better  express  this  stage   ot 

human  intelligence  in  which  one  is  inclined  to  ascribe  to  all  the 

phenomena  of  nature  not  indeed  souls,  as  distinct  from  bodies, 

but  simply  intentions,  desires,  volitions,  as  naturally  inhering 

in  the  objects  themselves.  Y* 

But  here  we  shall  perhaps  be  reminded  that,  as  Mr.  Spencer 

says,  the  distinction   between  things  animate   and   inanimate 

is  quite  clear  even  to  the  brute,  and,  a  fortiori,  to 

English classifi-   primitive   man  ;    so  that    primitive  man  will   not 
cation  of  things.       ^  ' 

attribute  desire  or  volition  to  a  thing  which  he 

knows  to  be  inanimate — animate,  inanimate  ;  how  we  do  come 

back  to  the  vague  !     Under  each  of   these  terms  the  modern 

man  ranges  a  group  of  ideas  absolutely  inaccessible  to  primi- 


56        GENESIS  Of  KELIGIOXS  IN  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

tive  man  and  to  the  lower  animals.  Personally  we  deny  that 
the  distinction  between  animate  and  inanimate  was  present 
in  the  earliest  stages  of  intellectual  evolution.  Certainly  both 
the  animal  and  the  savage  recognized  a  division  of  the  phe- 
nomena of  nature  into  two  classes;  one  is  composed  of  the 
things  which  are  disposed  to  do  them  good  or  evil,  the  other 
is  composed  of  those  which  ignore  them  simply ;  that  is  the 
primitive  distinction.  As  to  an  acquaintance  with  animate 
and  inanimate  they  are  innocent  of  anything  of  the  kind ;  on* 
this  point,  as  on  all  others,  they  confine  themselves  to  the 
grossest  sense-experience.  Their  senses  inform  them  that 
certain  objects  are  beings  who  are  altogether  inoffensive,  who 
eat  nobody  and  are  not  themselves  good  to  eat  ;  one  gives 
them  no  further  attention;  practically  they  do  not  exist.  I 
one  day  asked  a  peasant  woman  the  name  of  a  small  plant. 
She  looked  at  me  with  frank  astonishment  and  replied,  with  a 
shake  of  the  head,  "  Ce  nest  rien — it  is  nothing ;  it  is  not  good 
to  eat  I  ■'  That  woman  was  on  a  level  with  primitive  man. 
In  the  eyes  of  the  latter,  as  in  the  eye  of  an  animal,  one-half 
the  phenomena  of  nature  are  nothing — they  do  not  count ;  one 
scarcely  sees  them.  The  fruits  on  a  tree,  on  the  contrary,  are 
good  to  eat.  The  savage,  however,  perceives  immediately  that 
the  fruit  makes  no  active  resistance,  does  not  cry  out  w^hen  lie 
bites  into  it ;  and  he  considers  it,  therefore,  as  on  all  accounts 
absolutely  indifferent,  except  that  it  is  good  to  eat.  Rut  given 
a  fruit  that  poisons  him,  he  pTorrrptly  fears  it  and  venerates  it. 
Similarly  with  animals  :  stones  and  vegetation  hold  equally 
aloof  from  the  carnivora,  are  practically  as  distant  as  the 
moon  and  the  stars.  The  herbivora,  on  the  contrary,  pay  no 
attention  to  anything  but  vegetation.  Natural  objects  being 
thus  parcelled  off  into  two  classes,  the  class  of  the  indifferent 
and  inoffensive,  and  the  class  of  the  useful  and  hurtful,  the 
animal  soon  learns  to  recognize  that  in  the  second  class  the 
most  important  objects  are  those  which  possess  spontaneity 
of  movement.  But  in  his  eyes — and  this  is  a  fact  of  capital 
importance — spontaneity  of  movement  is  not  the  exclusive 
sign  of  life,  of  interior  activity  ;  it  is  a  sign  simply  of  utility, 
or  of  heightened  danger  for  him.     He  is  wholly  preoccupied 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  57 

with  personal  and  practical  consequences  ;  he  indulges  in  no 
superfluity  of  inference  in  regard  to  the  object  itself ;  he  does 
not  speculate.  Moreover,  a  moving  object  which  in  nowise 
affects  his  sensibility  rapidly  becomes  quite  as  indifferent  to 
him  as  a  motionless  object.  Animals  soon  become  accus- 
tomed to  the  passage  of  railway  trains :  cows  browse  tran- 
quilly, partridges  on  the  brow  of  a  hill  scarcely  lift  their  heads ; 
and  why?  Because  they  have  recognized  in  the  locomotive 
an  inanimate  mechanism  ?  '  Not  in  the  least ;  they  observe 
simply  that  the  locomotive  never  goes  out  of  its  way  to 
damage  them. 

This  being  the  primitive  conception  of  the  world,  we  believe 

that  the  more  incapable  an  uncivilized  being  is  of  observing 

and  reasoning  the  more  natural  it  should  be  for 

Belief  that  all  .  ,  .      .  ,  ,  .  ... 

things  are  ani-       him  to  acquire  the  conviction  that  objects  which 

mate  natural  to      ^^   ^^.g^.   struck  him   as   indifferent  are  not  genu- 

animals. 

inely  inanimate,  but  are  sometimes  malevolent 
in  their  intentions  toward  him,  sometimes  benevolent ;  that 
they  possess  in  effect  over  him  a  quite  respectable  degree  of 
power.  In  other  words  the  more  intelligent  an  animal  or  a 
savage  becomes,  the  more  superstitious  he  will  be,  and  thus 
by  the  very  progress  of  mental  evolution  the  primitive  dis- 
tinction of  objects  into  two  classes  will  become  dim — the  dis- 
tinction of  objects  into  those  which  are  altogether  indifferent 
and  outside  of  the  society  in  which  one  lives,  and  those  which 
are  more  or  less  Avorthy  of  attention,  more  or  less  closely  in 
practical  relations  with  us.  Mental  evolution  has  proceeded, 
believe  us,  in  precisely  the  opposite  direction  to  that  imagined 
by  Mr.  Spencer. 

Let  us  speak  first  of  the  more  intelligent  animals,  before 

'  According  to  Mr.  Spencer,  the  movement  of  a  train  does  not  appear  spontane- 
ous to  animals  because  it  is  continuous  ;  and  therein  lies  the  ground  of  their 
exemption  from  fright.  On  this  reasoning,  animals  who  live  in  the  neiglibourhood 
of  stations  should  display  fright  at  the  arrival  and  departure  of  trains.  Nothing 
of  the  kind  is  observable.  They  are  equally  incurious  in  regard  to  horses  harnessed 
to  wagons  on  a  high-road.  Specufetive  disinterestedness  is  altogether  lacking  in 
animals  and  savages  ;  they  live  locked  in  the  arms  of  sensation  and  desire  ;  they 
spontaneously  draw  a  circle  about  their  ego,  and  whatsoever  lies  beyond  lies  beyond 
their  intelligence. 


58        G  EXE  SIS  OF  RELIGIONS  IX   PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

passing    to    man.      The    more    intelligent   animals    are    often 

obliged  to  give  their  attention  to  a  class  of  objects  in  appear- 

„  .  ance   indifferent  to  them  and  to  modify  the  im- 

Motion  a  mate-  .        , 

rial  sign  of  life      perfect  ideas  which  they  had  at  first  conceived 
'^^  ^^^™'  in   regard   to   them.     Generally  speaking,  objects 

of  this  sort  are  motionless  ;  if  immobility  be  not  their  essential 
distinguishing  characteristic,  it  is  at  least  one  of  their  princi- 
pal distinguishing  characteristics.  The  instinct  of  self-preser- 
vation in  a  being  inevitably  bestirs  itself  in  the  presence  of 
every  movement  that  looks  like  a  menace.  Well,  an  animal 
is  soon  obliged  to  recognize  that  indifferent  objects  possess  in 
certain  circumstances  the  attribute  of  spontaneous  movement, 
an  attribute  which  is  for  him  so  vitally  interesting.  I  remember 
the  surprise  a  kitten  once  showed  when  it  perceived  the  dead 
leaves  rise  in  the  wind  and  circulate  about  it ;  at  first  it  ran 
away,  and  then  came  back  and  pursued  the  leaves,  and  smelt 
them,  and  touched  them  with  its  paw.  Darwin  relates  that  a 
dog  was  one  day  lying  near  an  open  parasol  on  the  lawn ;  the 
parasol  moved  in  the  breeze,  the  dog  began  to  bay,  to  growl 
furiously,  and,  every  time  that  the  parasol  moved  again,  began 
to  growl  afresh.  Evidently  it  was  a  new  thing  to  Darwin's 
dog  that  such  an  object  as  a  parasol  might  change  its  place 
without  the  visible  intervention  of  some  person  ;  all  the  dog's 
classifications  were  thrown  into  disorder,  he  was  no  longer 
certain  whether  he  must  class  the  parasol  with  things  indiffer- 
ent or  with  things  harmful.  He  would  have  experienced  an 
analogous  impression  if  he  had  seen  a  paralytic  patient, 
always  theretofore  motionless  in  his  armchair,  suddenly  rise 
and  walk.  An  animal's  surprise  is  still  more  strong  when  an 
object  regarded  as  till  then  indifferent  approaches  him  and 
manifests  its  activity  by  an  infliction  of  sudden  pain.  I  wit- 
nessed the  astonishment  of  a  cat  which,  having  seen  a  red-hot 
coal  roll  out  of  the  stove  door,  leaped  forward  to  play  with  it; 
he  caught  it  simultaneously  with  snout  and  paw,  gave  a  cry  of 
pain,  and  fled  in  such  fear  that  it  was  two  days  before  he 
returned  to  the  house.  Mr.  Spencer  himself  cites  another 
example  which  he  has  observed.  The  beast  was  a  formidable 
creature,   half  mastiff,  half   hound,  who   was   playing  with  a 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  59 

cane  ;  he  was  leaping  and  gambolling,  and  holding  it  by  the 
ferule  end.  Suddenly  the  handle  of  the  cane  touched  the 
ground  and  the  ferule  was  pushed  forcibly  back  toward  the 
dog's  palate.  The  animal  groaned,  let  the  cane  fall,  and  fled 
some  distance  away  ;  and  there  he  manifested,  it  appears,  a 
degree  of  alarm  truly  comic  in  a  beast  apparently  so  ferocious. 
It  was  only  after  many  cautious  approaches  and  much  hesita- 
tion that  he  yielded  to  the  temptation  of  taking  hold  of  the 
cane.  Mr.  Spencer,  who  supplies  us  with  this  fact,  with  great 
impartiality  concludes  from  it,  as  we  also  do,  that  it  was  the 
unusual  conduct  of  the  cane  which  suggested  to  the  dog  the 
notion  that  it  was  animate  ;  but  he  hastens  to  add  that  before 
the  vague  idea  of  animation  thus  given  rise  to  in  an  animal 
could  become  definite  in  a  man,  the  intervention  of  some 
spiritualistic  theory  would  be  absolutely  necessary.  One  may 
well  ask  one's  self  what  spiritualism  has  to  do  with  the  case.' 

One  may  learn  from  the  preceding  example  something  like 
what  animals  conceive  the  inert  instruments  to  be  which  they 

see  us  handling  and  with  which   we   sometimes 
lastruments  ~^ 

snpposed  to  be  Strike  them.  The  notion  of  an  instrument,  as 
animate  by  such,  is   relatively   modern    and    was   altogether 

animals.  ■'  ° 

unknown   in  the  early  stages   of   evolution.     An 

instrument,  in  the  eyes  of  an  animal  as  in  the  eyes  of  primitive 
man,  is  almost  a  companion  and  an  accomplice ;  neither  the 
one  nor  the  other  possesses  any  other  notion  in  especial  of 
causation  than  that  of  a  co-operation,  mute  agreement  between 
two  associated  beings.  A  lion,  which  Livingstone  shot  at  and 
did  not  hit,  ran  first  to  bite  the  stone  which  the  bullet  had 
struck;  it  was  only  subsequently  that  he  threw  himself  upon 
the  hunter;  the  ball,  the  gun,  the  hunter,  were  so  many  dis- 
tinct and  separate  enemies  that  he  was  bent  on  punishing  in 
succession.  Similarly,  in  an  ancient  list  of  pains  and  penalties, 
one  finds  that  the  warrior  is  to  lose  his  hand,  the  blasphemer 
his  tongue,  the  spy  his  ears.  At  this  moment  my  dog  is  at 
my  side  ;  the  whip  with  which  I  corrected  him  this  morning 
lies  upon  a  chair  ;  the  dog  walks  about  that  chair  sniffing  the 
air  with  defiance  and  respect,  and  I  do  not  believe  he  would 

'  Principles  of  Sociology. 


6o        G  EXE  SIS  OF  RELIGIONS  IX   PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

have  the  courage  to  touch  it,  He  is  aware,  however,  that 
when  the  whip  hurt  him,  the  circumstances  were  quite  dif- 
ferent, that  I  was  holding  that  dangerous  object  in  my  hand, 
and  that  I  was,  in  a  sense,  the  first  cause  of  his  chastisement. 
Still  he  is  not  perfectly  reassured,  as  he  would  be  in  the 
presence  of  an  inert  object.  The  impression  he  seems  to  have 
got  strikes  me  as  comparable  to  that  which  a  child  receives 
from  a  serpent  behind  a  pane  of  glass;  the  child  knows  per- 
fectly that  under  the  actual  circumstances  he  is  safe,  but  lie  • 
cannot  help  saying  to  himself,  "  If  the  circumstances  were 
otherwise  !  " '  Recollect  that  the  Australian  savage  treats  the 
white  man's  gun  as  a  living  and  powerful  being  which  he 
adores  and  crowns  with  flowers  and  supplicates  not  to  kill  him. 
Legend  attributes  a  magic  power  to  the  swords  of  great  cap- 
tains, to  Joyeuse  or  to  Durandal.  In  our  own  days,  even,  one 
sees  combatants  spend  their    force    not  only    against    their 

'  Add  that  when  an  animal  or  primitive  man  has  recognized  that  a  certain 
object  possesses  a  particular  attribute,  he  often  finds  it  difficult  to  recognize  that 
simply  analogous  objects  possess  the  same  attribute.  I  was  one  day  making  a 
kitten  run  after  a  wooden  ball  as  a  dog  would  do  ;  the  ball  struck  it  and  hurt  it  ; 
it  cried  out  and  I  petted  it  and  then  wanted  to  begin  playing  once  more  ;  it  would 
run  willingly  even  after  large  stones  when  I  threw  them,  but  obstinately  refused  to 
run  after  the  ball.  So  that  it  evidently  conceived  that  the  ball  alone  possessed  the 
attribute  of  power  to  injure  it  ;  the  kitten  looked  upon  the  ball,  no  doubt,  with  an 
evil  eye,  regarded  it  perhaps  as  an  evil  being  who  was  unwilling  to  play;  by  a  fault 
of  generalization  the  kitten  created  for  itself  a  sort  of  fetich  which  it  did  not  adore 
indeed,  but  which  it  feared,  and  fear  is  a  step  toward  adoration. 

Mr.  Spencer  himself  admits  in  savages  a  certain  inaptitude  for  generalization. 
This  opinion,  paradoxical  as  it  may  seem,  is  perhaps  an  important  truth.  If 
primitive  intelligences,  as  M.  Taine  among  others  remarked,  are  especially  prompt 
at  noticing  the  superficial  resemblances  of  things,  that  fact  is  not  always  a  mark  of 
genuine  perspicacity,  for  the  resemblance  perceived  between  two  sensations  may 
be  explicable  less  as  an  intelligent  generalization  than  as  a  sort  of  confusion  of  the 
sensations  themselves  ;  if  sensations  are  analogous  or  indistinct,  they  may  naturally 
be  mistaken  for  each  other  without  any  exercise  whatsoever  of  intelligence. 
Thence  the  comparative  insignificance  of  many  examples  taken  from  the  case  of 
lanfuatre.  True  generalization  seems  to  consist,  more  than  anything  else,  in  the 
reduction  of  facts  to  law  ;  that  is  to  say,  in  a  conscious  alistraction  of  differences,  in 
a  conscious  recognition  of  the  fundamental  determinism  which  binds  things  up 
together  and  which  precisely  eludes  both  savages  and  animals. 

Note  finally  that  tlie  majority  of  animals  and  of  savages,  when  they  have  once 
been  deceived,  are  slow  to  recover  from  their  error,  are  for  a  long  time  distrustful 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  6i 

enemies  but  against  everything  which  pertains  to  them  ;  it  is 
as  if  something  were  supposed  to  have  passed  from  the  man 
into   everything   lie   possesses.     Nothing  is  more  difficult  to     \ 
recognize  than  the  profound  indifference  of  nature. 

Mr.    Spencer,    who   denies   that    the    child    spontaneously 

strikes  the  table    which   has  wounded  him,   is  not,   however, 

„    ,   ,  unaware  that   a    savage — the    Indian    Tupis,  for 

Conduct  gener-  ^  ^ 

ates  beliefs  that  example — if  he  has  bruised  his  foot  against  a 
justify  It.  stone,  leaps  against  it  in  fury  and  bites  it  like  a 

dog.  Mr.  Spencer  sees  in  such  facts  a  phenomenon  wholly 
physical,  the  need  for  spending  one's  rage  in  violent 
muscular  action  ;  but  this  very  need  can  but  favour  the 
birth  of  a  psychological  illusion,  of  which  the  tenacity  will 
be  proportionate  to  the  intensity  of  the  sentiment.  The 
physical  and  the  moral  are  too  closely  bound  up  together  for 
a  physical  expression   of  anger  not  to  be  accompanied   by  a 

toward  the  object  which  has  deceived  them.  A  dog,  coming  home  one  evening, 
perceived  an  empty  cask  in  an  unusual  place.  He  was  extremely  frightened  and 
barked  for  a  long  time  ;  it  was  only  by  day  that  he  dared  approach  near  the  object 
of  his  alarm,  and  he  examined  and  moved  about  it,  and  finally,  like  the  frog  in 
La  Fontaine's  fable,  recognized  that  the  thing  was  inoffensive.  If  the  cask  in 
question  had  disappeared  during  the  night,  the  dog  would  evidently  have  remem- 
bered it  as  a  redoubtable  being  seen  the  evening  before  in  the  yard.  A  monkey, 
which  I  left  in  the  room  with  a  cardboard  sheep  one  entire  day,  proved  unable  to 
the  end  entirely  to  satisfy  itself  that  the  sheep  was  inanimate.  I  believe,  however. 
that  this  persuasion  was  ultimately  achieved,  for  the  monkey  began  finally  to  pluck 
the  sheep's  wool  and  to  treat  it  something  too  familiarly.  But  nature  seldom  per- 
mits us  equally  extended  tetc-a-(ele  with  objects  that  alarm  us. 

Messrs.  Spencer  and  Muller  will  call  our  attention  to  the  fact,  it  is  true,  that 
cardboard  sheep,  no  more  than  hand-organs  or  watches,  exist  in  rerum  natitra. 
We  reply  that  nature  supplies  primitive  man  with  things  much  more  astonishing  : 
with  rocks,  and  forests  which  can  talk  (the  echo),  with  springs  of  hot  water,  with 
intermittent  fountains.  Mr.  Fergusson  (T';-/?^'  and  Serpent  Worship)  relates  that 
in  India  he  saw  with  his  own  eyes  a  tree  which  saluted  the  rising  and  setting  sun, 
by  lifting  or  lowering  its  boughs.  Temples  had  formerly  been  reared  in  its  neigh- 
bourhood. People  came  from  all  sides  to  see  the  marvellous  tree.  This  tree  was 
ail  old  date-palm,  half  decayed,  which  hung  above  llie  road  ;  in  order  to  pass  below 
it,  it  had  been  held  back  by  a  rope  ;  but  during  this  operation  the  fibres  which 
composed  the  trunk  were  twisted  like  the  threads  in  a  rope.  These  fibres  con- 
tracted toward  midday  in  the  heat  of  the  sun  ;  the  tree  untwisted  and  rose.  It 
relaxed  under  the  dew  at  evening  and  once  more  bowed  down.  (See  M.  Girard  de 
Rialle,  Mythologie  comparee,  t.  i.) 


62        GEA'ESIS   OF  RELIGIONS  LV  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

moral    belief    corresponding    to   the    action;    if    a    powerful 
instinct  induces  us  to  treat  a  stone  as  an  enemy,  we  shall  very 
\    really  see  an  enemy  in  this  stone. 

Mr.  Romanes  made  some  observations,  of  the  same  kind  as 

those  of  Mr.  Spencer,  upon  a  very  intelligent  Skye  terrier.    This 

terrier,  like  many  other  dogs,  was  accustomed  to 

efirente''^^'  ^^^V  ^^'^^^^  ^"^^^^  bones,  throwing  them  into  the  air 
and  endowing  them  with  an  appearance  of  life, 
for  the  pleasure  of  chasing  them  afterward.  Mr.  Romanes 
attached  a  long  slender  thread  to  a  dried  bone  which  he  gave 
the  dog  to  play  with.  After  he  had  played  for  some 
time  Mr.  Romanes  chose  an  opportune  moment,  when  the 
bone  had  fallen  to  the  ground  some  distance  away,  and 
the  terrier  was  approaching  it ;  he  drew  the  bone  gently 
away,  by  means  of  the  thread  attached  to  it.  The  attitude  of 
the  terrier  changed  entirely.  The  bone,  which  he  had  been 
pretending  to  regard  as  living,  appeared  to  him  to  be  really 
so,  and  his  surprise  knew  no  bounds.  He  approached  it  ner- 
vously and  cautiously,  as  Mr.  Spencer  describes  in  the  obser- 
vation which  he  made ;  but  the  slow  motion  of  the  bone 
continued,  and  the  dog  became  more  and  more  certain  that 
the  movement  could  not  be  explained  as  resulting  from  the 
impulsion  which  he  had  communicated  ;  his  surprise  became 
terror,  and  he  ran  away  and  hid  himself  under  the  table,  to 
study  from  a  distance  the  disconcerting  spectacle  of  dried 
bones  coming  to  life  again  ! 

Another  of  Mr.  Romanes'  experiments  on  the  same  dog  shows 

that  the  sentiment  of  the  mysterious  was,  in  this  animal,  quite 

powerful  enough  to  serve  as  an  explanation  of 

Soap-bnbbleez-   j^j^   conduct.     Having    taken    the    terrier  into    a 

penmeEt.  ^ 

carpeted  room,  Mr.  Romanes  rolled  some  soap- 
bubbles  which  an  unsteady  draft  of  air  blew  about  the  carpet. 
The  dog  took  a  great  interest  in  the  matter,  and  seemed 
unable  to  decide  whether  the  bubbles  were  alive  or  not.  At 
first  he  was  very  prudent,  and  followed  the  bubbles  at  a  dis- 
tance, but  as  he  was  encouraged  to  examine  them  more 
closely,  he  approached  them  with  his  ears  up  and  his  tail 
down,  in  evident  apprehension  ;  the  instant  the  bubble  moved 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  63 

he  drew  back.  After  a  time,  however,  during  which  there 
was  at  least  one  bubble  on  the  floor,  he  took  courage,  and, 
the  scientific  spirit  gaining  the  upper  hand  over  the  sentiment 
of  mystery,  he  became  brave  enough  to  draw  slowly  near  one 
of  them  and  to  put  his  paw  upon  it,  not  without  anxiety. 
Naturally  the  bubble  burst,  and  his  astonishment  was  vivid  in 
the  extreme.  Mr.  Romanes  made  other  bubbles,  but  could 
not  persuade  the  dog  to  approach  them  for  a  long  time. 
After  a  while,  however,  he  started  again  in  pursuit  of  one, 
and  endeavoured  with  much  caution  to  put  his  paw  upon  it. 
The  result  was  the  same  as  before.  After  the  second 
attempt  it  was  impossible  to  induce  him  to  make  a  third, 
and  he  ultimately  ran  out  of  the  room  and  could  not  be 
coaxed  back.  The  same  experiment,  tried  by  Professor  Del- 
bceuf  on  his  dog  Alouston,  gave  a  still  more  striking  result. 
At  the  blowing  of  the  fourth  bubble,  his  wrath  knew  no  bounds, 
but  he  no  longer  sought  to  seize  it,  he  contented  himself  with 
barking  at  it,  in  all  the  accents  of  rage,  until  it  burst.  Pro- 
fessor Delbceuf  wished  to  continue  the  experiment,  and 
attempted  to  do  so,  but,  to  his  great  regret,  was  obliged  to 
break  off  because  of  the  frenzy  into  which  the  dog  had 
worked  himself.  The  moment  that  Professor  Delbceuf  laid 
his  hand  upon  the  vessel  containing  the  soap-suds,  the  dog 
was  no  longer  under  his  control.  His  condition  was  evidently 
due.  Professor  Delbceuf  says,  to  a  contradiction  between  the 
fact  and  his  experience,  that  everything  which  is  coloured  is 
tangible.  He  was  in  the  presence  of  the  unknown,  with  all 
its  mysteries  and  menaces;  the  unknown,  which  is  the  source 
of  fear  and  of  superstition. 

According   to    Mr.  Romanes  the   fear  that   many  animals 

have    of   thunder    is   due,  in    some    sort,  to   a    sentiment    of 

Fear  of  thunder  'T^vstery.     He  once  possessed  a  setter,  which,  he 

in  animals  due  to  says,  had  not  heard  thunder  until  it  had  reached 

sense  0  mys  ery.     ^j^^  ^^^  ^^  eighteen  months,  when  it  almost  died 

of  fear.  He  has  observed  the  same  phenomenon  in  other 
animals,  in  diverse  circumstances.  The  fright  of  the  setter 
in  question  was  so  strong  that,  subsequently,  when  he  heard 
some  artillery  practice  and  mistook  it  for  thunder,  his  aspect 


64        GEXESIS  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

was  positively  pitiable,  and  in  the  midst  of  the  chase  he 
endeavoured  to  hide  himself,  or  to  gain  the  house.  After 
two  or  three  experiences  of  thunder  his  horror  of  cannon 
became  greater  than  ever,  so  much  so  that,  in  spite  of  his 
love  for  the  chase,  it  was  impossible  to  coax  him  out  of  his 
kennel,  so  great  was  his  fear  that  the  artillery  practice  might 
recommence  and  he  be  distant  from  the  house.  But  the 
keeper,  who  had  had  a  wide  experience  of  dogs,  assured  Mr.^ 
Romanes  that,  if  the  dog  were  once  taken  to  the  battery  and 
shown  the  veritable  cause  for  a  noise  analogous  to  that  of 
thunder,  he  would  become  once  more  fit  for  the  hunt.  Mr. 
Romanes  does  not  doubt  that  such  would  have  been  the  case, 
for  once,  when  sacks  of  apples  were  being  emptied,  it  made 
a  noise  in  the  house  like  distant  thunder;  the  setter  was  very 
restless,  but  when  Mr.  Romanes  took  him  where  the  sacks 
were  being  opened  and  showed  him  the  real  cause  of  the 
noise,  his  terror  left  him,  and  on  his  return  to  the  house  he 
listened  to  the  low  rumbling  in  perfect  quietude. 

When   one  looks  close  one  is  surprised  to  see  how  many 

causes  would  naturally  lead  one  to  attribute  life,  and  life  of  an 

extraordinary  and  mysterious  character,  to  such 

phenomena  tend     and  such  really  passive  objects.     Such  causes  act 

to  seem  artificial    evidently  with  greatly  additional  power  upon  the 

to  primitive  man,  ^  ... 

savage,    the    primitive    man,    the    man    of    the 
quaternary   epoch,    or   upon    the    anthropoid,    as   yet    undis- 
covered, whose  instruments  have  been  found  in  the  tertiary 
period.      Common  animals,  in  efYect,  are    almost    lacking  in    .* 
attention  ;    from  which  it  results  that  to  produce  any  durable    >» 
mental  effect  on  them,  a  prolonged   repetition   of  the  same    » 
sensation  is  necessary;  they  must  be  accustomed  to  it.     More- 
over their  crude  intelligence  takes  no  impression  from  evanes* 
cent  facts,  they  are  unaquainted  with  the  external  world  except 
by  averages.   -Exceptional  facts  strike  them   for  an  instant, 
but   presently   glance   off   into    oblivion.      In    this   imperfect* 
machine,  wear  and  tear  is  very  rapid   and  the  traces  of  phe-' 
nomena  inevitably  blur  and  become  confounded.     If  animals 
possess  a  memory    for   sensations,   they   lack  an   intellectual 
memory  altogether ;    they  are  capable  of  surprise,  but  not  of 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  65 

remembering  a  surprise.  To  produce  in  them  a  tenacious 
memory  demands  a  setting  of  pain  or  pleasure,  and  even  then, 
if  they  recollect  the  sensation  they  experienced,  they  readily 
forget  the  grounds  of  it.  They  feel  passively,  instead  of 
observing.  From  the  moment  where,  with  man,  the  spirit 
of  observation  enters  upon  the  scene  everything  is  different; 
an  exceptional  fact,  for  the  same  reason  that  it  becomes 
rapidly  effaced  in  an  animal  intelligence,  penetrates  the  more 
deeply  into  the  memory  of  a  man.  Moreover,  man's  sphere  of 
action  is  much  wider  than  that  of  any  animal,  and  conse- 
quently the  field  of  his  experience  is  much  more  vast ;  the 
more  he  modifies,  voluntarily,  the  face  of  nature,  the  more 
capable  he  becomes  of  recognizing  and  observing  the  variations 
which  it  presents,  independently  of  his  interventions.  Man 
possesses  a  notion  unknown  to  animals,  the  notion  oi  artificial 
things,  of  results  deliberately  attained  by  self-conscious  voli- 
tion. One  remembers  that  fetich  comes  from  factitius,  arti- 
ficial. Man,  being  acquainted  with  the  use  of  fire,  will  regard, 
for  example,  a  forest  set  ablaze  by  lightning  from  entirely  a  differ- 
ent point  of  view  from  what  any  animal  could  :  the  animal  will 
flee  without  any  other  sentiment  than  that  of  alarm  ;  the  man 
will  naturally  suppose  the  existence  of  some  person  who  set  it 
on  fire — who  was  acting,  who  was  doing  on  a  grand  scale  what 
he  himself  sometimes  does.  Similarly  with  a  boiling  spring; 
this  phenomenon  lies  too  far  beyond  the  limits  of  animal  intel- 
ligence to  be  especially  striking;  but  a  man.  on  the  other  hand, 
who  habitually  goes  to  some  trouble  to  provide  himself  with 
boiling  water,  infers  the  existence  of  some  subterranean  person 
who  is  heating  water  for  purposes  of  his  own.  All  natural 
phenomena  tend  thus  to  appear  artificial  to  the  eyes  of  a  being 
who  has  once  familiarized  himself  with  the  notion  of  artifice. 
I  was  present  recently  among  some  members  of  the  lower  classes 
at  the  flowing  of  an  intermittent  spring ;  not  one  of  them  was 
inclined  to  believe  the  phenomenon  a  natural  one,  they  regarded 
it  as  an  effect  of  some  mechanism,  of  some  artifice.  The  same 
belief  is  evidently  common  among  primitive  people,  with  this 
difference,  that  artificial,  instead  of  suggesting  mechanics, 
implies  the  notion  of  a  superhuman  and  marvellous- poa^ei:. 

^  X^  or   TBF  ' 

I  UNIVERSITY 


66        GEXES/S   OF  RELIGIONS  IX  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

Just  as  the  animal  finds  the  rationale  of  all  things  in  a  notion 
of  life   and   of   activity,  man  tends   to  find  a   rationale   of   all 

Fetichism  a  things  in  a  conception  of  art  and  of  scheming 
logical  theory  to  intelligence.  For  the  one,  surprising  phenomena 
pnmi  ive  man.  ^^^  simply  inexplicable  conduct;  for  the  other, 
they  are  the  complex  effects  of  deliberative  intelligence, 
they  are  master-pieces.  But  the  notion  of  activity,  far 
from  becoming  effaced  in  the  progress  of  evolution,  be- 
comes simply  more  definite  and  more  precise.  Given  his' 
incomplete  experience,  primitive  man  is  perfectly  logical  in 
attributing  intelligence  and  consciousness  to  nature,  he  could 
not  rationally  do  otherwise;  his  mind  is  imprisoned  in  a  blind 
alley,  and  superstition  is  the  sole  outlet.  At  a  given  moment 
in  human  evolution,  superstition  was  perfectly  rational. 

Even  in  our  days,  men  of  science  are  greatly  embarrassed 
by  their  inability  to  point  out  the  precise  line  of  demarcation 

«_„.  „  . „     between  the    animate    and   the   inanimate  ;    and 

beeming  imma- 
nence of  conscious  how  should  primitive  man  have  grappled  with 
life  in  natnre,  ^j^j^  problem?  How  distinguish,  for  example, 
between  sleep  and  death  during  one  entire  portion  of  life^, 
during  sleep,  living  bodies  lie  inert,  and  why  should  not 
inert  bodies  sometimes  prove  to  be  alive?  At  night  espe- 
cially, the  whole  becomes  transformed,  everything  becomes 
animate,  a  breath  of  wind  sufifices  to  make  everything 
palpitate  ;  it  seems  as  if  all  nature  awakened  after  its  day's 
sleep;  it  is  the  hour  when  wild  beasts  go  in  search  of  prey, 
and  mysterious  noises  fill  the  forest.  The  calmest  imagina- 
tion, under  such  circumstances,  yields  to  a  temptation  to  see 
fantastic  objects  that  are  not.  One  night  I  was  walking  on 
the  sea-shore,  and  saw  distinctly  a  gigantic  beast  moving 
some  distance  away  ;  it  proved  to  be  a  perfectly  motionless 
rock,  in  the  midst  of  others  like  it,  but  the  waves,  which  alter- 
nately covered  and  discovered  it  in  part,  lent  it,  to  my  eyes, 
some  portion  of  their  own  mobility.  How  many  things  in 
nature  borrow  thus  from  some  circumstance — from  the  wind, 
from  a  more  or  less  uncertain  light — an  appearance  of  life  ! ' 

'  Mr.  H.    Russell,   the  explorer  of  the   Pyrenees,   remarks  the  fantastic  effects 
produced    by   the    moonlight  in   the   mountains.      As  the  moonlight   replaced  the 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  67 

Even  when  the  eyes  themselves  would  be  incapable  of  self- 
deception,  the  influence  of  the  foolish  terrors  so  frequent 
among  children  and  beings  habituated  to  savage  life  would 
count  enormously.  Emotional  susceptibility  is  the  more 
highly  developed  among  savages,  in  that  it  forms  for  them 
frequently  a  means  of  safety.  And  primitive  man  is  much 
more  subject  than  we  are  to  hallucinations  of  the  sort  that 
are  due  to  terror,  and  are  not  wholly  fantastic,  but  result 
from  a  fantastic  interpretation  of  some  genuine  sense  stimulus. 
The  traveller  Park  met  two  negroes  on  horseback ;  they  fled 
from  him  at  a  gallop  in  extreme  terror,  and  meeting  his  fol- 
lowers in  the  course  of  their  flight  reported  that  they  had  seen 
him  dressed  in  the  floating  robes  of  some  redoubtable  spirit. 
One  of  them  affirmed  that  at  sight  of  Park  he  had  felt  himself 
enveloped  in  a  breath  of  cold  air  from  heaven,  which  was  like 
a  jet  of  cold  water.  Suppress  the  word  spirit  in  this  passage, 
which  implies  a  pre-existing  belief  in  the  soul,  and  you  will 
perceive  how  hallucinations  due  to  terror  may  well  give  birth 
to  beliefs  all  the  more  tenacious  for  the  element  of  truth  they 
contain. 

Dreams  also  have  played  a  considerable  role  in  the  genesis 
of  superstitions,  as  Epicurus  and  Lucretius  remarked,  and  the 
labours  of  Messrs.  Tylor  and  Spencer  have 
proved.  Primitive  language  supplies  no  means 
of  saying,  "  I  dreamt  that  I  saw  "  ;  one  must  say  simply,  "  I 
saw."  Well,  in  the  dreams  which  the  savage  himself  can 
scarcely  distinguish  from  reality,  he  sees  nothing  but  a  per- 
petual series  of  metamorphoses,  of  the  transformation  of  men 

previous  shadow  on  the  faces  and  the  angles  of  the  rocks,  he  says,  in  an  account 
of  the  ascension  of  the  peak  of  Eriste,  they  seemed  so  plainly  to  move  that  once 
he  mistook  one  of  them  for  a  bear  and  cocked  the  revolver  at  his  side.  The  same 
explorer  remarks  also  the  surprising  transformations  which  natural  objects  undergo 
at  nightfall  and  at  daybreak.  At  dawn,  he  says,  there  is  a  sort  of  universal  shiver 
which  seems  to  animate  everything  ;  the  sound  of  the  neighbouring  cascade  changed 
frequently  ;  at  break  of  day,  after  having  groaned  and  thundered  alternately,  it 
begins  to  scold.  For  in  the  morning  in  the  mountains,  he  says,  sounds  gain 
magnitude,  they  swell,  and  torrents  in  especial  lift  their  voices  as  if  angry  ;  with 
the  arrival  of  the  day  the  air  becomes  sonorous  and  sound  carries  farther.  He  has 
experienced  this,  he  says,  frequently,  but  does  not  understand  the  cause. — Alpine 
Club,  1S87. 


68        GENESIS  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRiriTIlE    ^^  J  IE  TIES. 

into  ferocious  beasts,  and  of  ferocious  beasts  into  men  ;  he 
dreams  that  he  picks  up  a  stone,  and  that  it  comes  to  hfe  in 
his  hand  ;  he  looks  out  upon  a  motionless  lake,  and  it  becomes 
suddenly  a  crawling  mass  of  crocodiles  and  of  serpents.'  How 
can  Mr.  Spencer  maintain,  after  that,  that  primitive  man  can 
distinguish  with  some  degree  of  certainty  the  animate  from 
the  inanimate?  Not  only  during  dreams,  but  during  wakeful- 
ness, everything  suggests  to  primitive  man  the  notion  of 
changes  of  substance  and  magic  metamorphoses.  Eggs', 
which  are  inanimate,  change  into  birds  or  insects;  dead  flesh 
becomes  living  worms;  an  efifigy,  under  the  influence  of 
memory,  seems  to  live  again  and  to  respire.^ 

An  animal  is  not  sufficiently  master  of  its  sensations  to  fol- 
low their  course  throughout  their  successive  modifications  ;  it 
is  not  in  any  proper  sense  a  witness,  as  man  is,  of 

Primitive  man  ,  , 

iumanizes nature,   the    progress,    of    the    perpetual   movement    and 

transformation  of  all  things  ;  nature  is,  for  it,  a 
series  of  detached  pictures  of  which  it  does  not  seize  the  con- 
trasts. When  man,  on  the  contrary,  follows  attentively  the 
more  or  less  slow  evolution  of  things,  he  perceives  the  efface- 
ment  of  every  fundamental  difference  between  the  animate 
and  the  inanimate,  he  observes  a  process  of  blind  mechanical 
labour,  which  produces  life  in  objects  in  appearance  quite 
inert.  Is  there  not  something  rationally  profound  and 
justifiable  in  the  very  naivete  with  which  he  interprets  nature? 
Poetry   is   often    philosophy    in    its   most    penetrating    form. 

'  Spencer's  Sociology. 

"^  Savages  imagine  that  they  see  the  eyes  of  portraits  move.  I  myself  saw 
a  cliild  of  two  years  old,  accustomed  to  play  with  engravings,  one  day  in  a  great 
fright  snatch  away  its  grandmother's  finger,  wliich  was  resting  on  the  picture  of 
a  ferocious  beast.  "  Big  beast  bite  grandmamma!  "  These  ideas,  which  totally 
ignore  the  profound  and  definitive  difference  between  animate  and  inanimate,  are 
fixed  in  the  human  mind.  A  man  of  distinguished  education  once  maintained  to 
me  quite  seriously  that  certain  petrifactive  sjirings  in  tlie  Pyrenees  possessed  the 
power  of  changing  sticks  into  serpents.  For  one  capable  of  imagming  that 
a  bit  of  wood  might  thus  become  a  serpent,  what  difificulty  would  there  be  in 
believing  that  the  bit  of  wood  is  alive  (even  a  bit  of  dead  wood),  that  the  spring  is 
alive  (in  especial  a  spring  with  such  marvellous  properties),  and  finally  that  the 
mountain  itself  is  alive;  everything  is  animate  to  eyes  like  that,  and  possessed  of 
magic  power. 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  69 

Who  has  not  asked  himself  sometimes  if  a  puissant  and  hid- 
den spring  of  life  does  not  circulate  unknown  to  us  in  the 
high  mountains,  in  the  still  trees,  and  in  the  restless  ocean,  and 
if  mute  nature  does  not  live  in  one  long  course  of  meditation 
upon  themes  unknown  to  us?  And  since  even  nowadays  we 
ourselves  are  full  of  such  vague  doubts  as  that,  do  we 
imagine  that  it  would  be  easy  to  convince  one  of  these  primi- 
tive men  of  his  error,  when  he  fancies  that  he  feels  the  beat- 
ing of  what  the  Germans  call  the  "  heart  of  nature  "?  After  all 
is  the  primitive  man  wrong?  Everything  about  us  does  live, 
nothing  is  inanimate  except  in  appearance,  inertia  is  a  word 
simply;  all  nature  is  one  universal  aspiration,  modern  science 
alone  can  measure  with  some  approach  to  accuracy  the  activ^- 
ity  with  which  all  things  are  saturated,  and  show  it  to  us, 
here  existent  in  a  state  of  diffusion,  there  in  a  state  of  con- 
centration, and  self-conscious,  and  make  us  acquainted  with 
the  difference  between  the  higher  organisms  and  the  lower 
organisms,  and  between  the  latter  and  mechanisms  and  rudi- 
mentary groupings  of  bits  of  matter.  For  primitive  man,  to 
whom  all  these  distinctions,  all  the  gradations  are  impossible, 
there  is  but  one  thing  evident,  and  that  is  that  the  whole  of 
nature  lives  ;  and  he  naturally  conceives  this  life  on  the  model  of 
his  own,  as  accompanied  by  self-consciousness,  by  an  intelli- 
gence the  more  astonishing  in  that  it  is  mysterious.  Moreover 
he  is  a  man,  and  humanizes  nature  ;  he  lives  in  society  with 
other  men,  and  conceives  all  things  in  terms  of  social  relations 
of  friendship  or  of  enmity. 

From  the  humanization  to  the  divinization  there  is  but  one 

step;  let  us  endeavour  to  make  it.     Whoever  says^^^,  means 

.,,.,.  a    living   and    powerful   being    worthy,   in    some 

And  diTiEizes  It.  .7,  r    r  r  r 

especial  degree,  of  fear,  of  respect,  or  of  grati- 
tude. Primitive  man  possesses  already,  let  us  suppose,  some 
notion  of  life  ;  he  needs  now  to  be  supplied  with  some 
notion  of  power,  which  alone  is  capable  of  inspiring  him  with 
reverence,  and  this  notion  it  does  not  seem  difficult  for  a 
being  to  obtain,  who  sees  in  all  nature  an  expression  of  a  mani- 
fold conscious  life,  and  who  must  recognize  in  certain  great 
phenomena  the  manifestation  of  a  will  much  more  powerful 


70        GENESIS  OF  HELIGIOXS  IN  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

than  that  of  any  man,  and  consequently  more  redoubtable 
and  worthy  of  respect.  Here  also,  however,  we  encounter 
serious  objections  from  Mr.  Spencer  and  from  anthropolo- 
gists like  M.  Le  Bon  ;  the  question  becomes  more  complex. 

According   to    Mr.    Spencer,  as    we    have    seen,   the    most 

important  phenomena  of  nature,  and  among  others  the  rising 

Natural  phe-       '^'^^1  the   setting  of  the  sun,  are  precisely  those 

nomena quite         which  must  be  least  striking  to  primitive  man; 

striking  enough  ,  .  ,  , . 

to  be  adored  on  they  Cannot  appear  to  hnn  to  be  extraordinary 
their  own  account,  because  they  happen  every  day;  so  that  he 
experiences  before  them  neither  surprise  nor  admiration. 
This  argument  is  very  ingenious,  but  is  it  not  also  a 
little  sophistical  ?  If  it  were  pushed  to  the  end  it  would 
amount  simply  to  the  fact  that  there  is  nothing  surprising 
or  unusual  in  nature,  nothing  which  breaks  with  the  precon- 
ceived association  of  ideas,  nothing  which  seems  to  mani- 
fest the  sudden  intervention  of  strong  or  violent  powers.  The 
fact,  however,  is  quite  the  contrary  ;  nature  is  full  of  surprises 
and  of  terrors.  The  day  may  be  fine  ;  suddenly  the  clouds 
gather  and  the  thunder  rolls — the  fear  of  thunder  felt  by  animals 
has  already  been  spoken  of ;  in  the  mountains  especially  the 
rumbling,  re-echoing,  fills  them  with  unspeakable  terror. 
Droves  of  cattle  lose  all  control  of  themselves  and  throw  them- 
selves headlong  down  precipices.  It  is  with  great  dif^culty  that 
the  herdsman  by  his  presence  and  exhortations  keeps  his  herd 
in  order;  probably  the  beasts  see  in  the  herdsman  a  powerful 
friend,  capable  of  protecting  them  against  this  terrible  being 
whom  the  Hindus  call  the  "  howler."  If  animals  tremble 
thus  before  the  thunder,  it  is  unlikely  that  primitive  man 
should  see  nothing  in  it  abnormal  and  extraordinary.  Simi- 
larly with  the  hurricane,  which  seems  like  an  enormous 
respiration,  as  of  a  universe  out  of  breath.  Similarly  with  the 
tempest:  one  knows  the  Basque  proverb:  "If  you  want  to 
learn  to  pray,  go  to  sea."  Everyone  who  finds  himself  in  the 
hands  of  a  victorious  enemj'  is  naturally  inclined  to  beg  for 
mercy.  Let  there  supervene  a  sudden  calm  ;  at  the  moment 
when  the  tempest  was  about  to  break,  let  the  sun  reappear 
like    a  great  smiling    face,  chasing  away  the  cloud  with  his 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  7 1 

arrow  of  gold,  and  will  it  not  seem  a  benevolent  auxiliary  ; 
will  it  not  be  received  with  cries  of  joy  and  enthusiasm  ? 
Nature  is  incessantly  showing  us  thus  some  unexpected  change 
of  scene,  producing  some  theatrical  effect  which  inevitably'' 
suggests  some  anthropomorphic  drama,  in  which  the  ele- 
ments and  the  stars  are  the  actors.  How  many  strange 
things  happen  in  the  sky  when  once  the  attention  is  directed 
thither!  Eclipses  of  the  moon  and  of  the  sun,  and  the  very 
phases  of  the  moon,  are  abundantly  calculated  to  astonish  the 
very  savages  whom  Messrs.  Spencer  and  Muller  declare  to 
be  incapable  of  astonishment.  Note,  too,  that  the  simple 
view  of  the  stars  at  night  provokes  a  lively  admiration  in  any- 
one who  is  accustomed  to  sleep  under  a  roof.  I  remember 
still  my  surprise,  when,  as  a  child,  I  was  awake  for  the  first 
time  in  the  night  and  lifted  my  eyes  by  chance  on  high  and 
perceived  the  heaven  glittering  with  stars  ;  it  was  one  of  the 
most  striking  impressions  of  my  life.' 

In  effect,  earth  and  sky  incessantly  furnish  mankind  with 

'  Let  us  remember  in  this  connection  that,  according  to  Wuttke,  J.  G.  Muller, 
and  Schultze,  a  cult  for  the  moon  and  nocturnal  stars  must  have  preceded  that  of 
the  sun,  contrary  to  the  weight  of  opinion  heretofore.  The  moon's  phases  were 
calculated  to  take  the  attention  of  primitive  people,  and  must  early  have  done  so. 
One  must,  however,  in  this  connection  be  on  one's  guard  against  generalising  too 
quickly  and  believing  that  the  evolution  of  human  thought  has  in  all  places  fol- 
lowed the  same  route.  Habitats  differ  too  widely  for  there  not  to  have  been  in 
the  beginning  an  infinite  diversity  in  the  religious  conceptions  entertained  by  dif- 
ferent peoples.  In  Africa,  for  example,  it  is  evident  a  priori  that  the  sun  does  not 
possess  all  the  characteristics  of  a  divinity.  It  is  never  desired  or  regretted,  as  in  a 
northern  country;  it  is,  to  all  appearance  at  least,  rather  maleficent  than  benefi- 
cent; and  the  Africans  adore  by  preference  the  moon  and  stars,  the  gentle  radiance 
of  which  affords  them  light  without  oppressive  heat,  refreshes  and  reposes  them 
from  the  fatigues  of  the  day.  The  moon  is  considered  by  them  as  a  male  and  all- 
powerful  being,  of  which  the  sun  is  the  female.  It  is  when  the  new  moon  arises, 
after  its  period  of  absence  from  the  heavens,  and  begins  once  more  the  round  of  its 
visible  phases,  that  it  is  received  and  saluted  with  an  especial  demonstration  of 
cries  and  dances.  The  Congo  blacks  go  the  length  of  seeing  in  the  moon  a  sym- 
bol of  immortality  (M.  Girard  de  Rialle,  Mythologie  compare'e,  p.  148). 
America,  on  the  contrary',  has  been  the  centre  of  the  worship  of  the  sun.  In  gen- 
eral it  seems  that  agriculture  must  of  necessity  result  in  the  triumph  of  sun  worship 
over  moon  worship,  for  the  labourer  is  more  dependent  upon  the  sun  than  the 
hunter  or  the  warrior.  According  to  J.  G.  Muller,  savage  and  warlike  races  have 
displayed  a  preference  for  the  moon. 


12        GEXESIS   OF  RELIGIO.YS  IX  PRIMITIVE   SOCIETIES. 

new  impressions  capable  of  stimulating  the  most  torpid  im- 
agination, and  of  appealing  to  the  whole  round  of  human  and 
social  sensibilities:  fear,  respect,  gratitude.  With  these  three 
elements  it  is  easy  to  account  for  the  genesis  of  the  religious 
sentiment.'  If.  then,  our  ancestors  adored  the  dawn,  we  do 
not  believe,  with  Max  Muller,  that  it  was  because  it  seemed 
to  open  the  gates  of  heaven  and  reveal  to  them  a  vision  of  the 
infinite  ;  we  do  not  admit,  with  Mr.  Spencer,  that  a  cult  for 
the  stars  is  reducible  in  the  last  resort  to  a  simple  confusion  of 
names,  and  was  originally  but  an  off-shoot  from  ancestor 
worship  due  originally  to  the  soul  of  some  ancestor,  who  was 
metaphorically  called  in  his  lifetime  by  the  name  of  the  sun 
or  of  some  star.  It  seems  to  us  that  one  might  quite  well  wor- 
ship the  sun  and  the  stars  on  their  own  account,  or  rather  on 
account  of  the  relation  they  bear  to  us. 

To  sum  up,  the  simplest,  the  most  primitive  conception  that 
'  man  can  form  of  nature  is  to  regard  it,  not  as  a  manifold  of 
interdependent  phenomena,  but  as  a  multitude  of 
ummary.  ^onscious  and  voluntary  beings,  more  or  less 
independent  and  endowed  with  extreme  power,  capable  of 
acting  upon  each  other  and  upon  mankind.  Scientific  deter- 
minism cannot  but  be  a  much  later  conception,  incapable  of 
suggesting  itself  in  the  early  stages  of  human  thought.  The 
world  once  conceived  thus  as  a  collection  of  physically  pow- 
erful, voluntary  beings,  man  comes,  in  the  course  of  time,  to 
endow  these  beings,  morally  and  socially,  with  qualities  ac- 
cording to  the  manner  in  which  they  conduct  themselves 
toward  him.  "  The  moon  is  naughty  this  evening,"  a 
child  said  to  me  ;  "  it  will  not  show  itself."  Primitive  man 
said  also  that  the  hurricane  was  naughty,  the  thunder  was 
naughty,  and  so  forth,  whereas  the  sun,  the  moon,  the  lire, 
when    they   gave   him    pleasure,    were    good    and  beneficent. 

'  As  has  been  remarked,  the  adoration  of  natural  forces  has  been  observed 
under  two  forms.  It  has  been  addressed  sometimes  to  regular  and  calm  phenom- 
ena (Chaldeans,  Egyptians),  sometimes  to  changing  and  portentous  phenomena 
(Jews,  Indo-Europeans).  It  almost  always  results  in  the  personification  of  these 
forces. 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  73 

Well,  given  a  world  of  voluntary  beings  sometimes  good, 
sometimes  evil,  armed  with  irresistible  power,  easy  to  irritate, 
prompt  to  take  vengeance  as  man  is  himself,  are  they  not 
gods?  And  if  primitive  man  thus  possesses  gods,  does  he  not 
also  possess  a  religion  as  the  ceremonial  which  regulates  his 
social  relations  with  the  gods?  To  create  a  religion  we  need, 
in  effect,  to  add  but  one  idea  to  those  already  dealt  with — the 
idea  that  it  is  possible  by  such  and  such  conduct,  by  offerings, 
by  supplications,  to  influence  the  superior  beings  with  which 
nature  is  peopled  ;  but  this  idea,  which  seems  to  us  quite 
simple,  did  not,  however,  appear  before  a  relatively  advanced 
stage  of  int  llectual  evolution.  A  savage  animal  is  scarcely 
acquainted  with  any  other  means  of  influencing  other  beings 
than  biting,  growling,  and  menacing ;  if  these  means  fail,  he 
counts  on  flight.  A  mouse  has  no  hope  of  influencing  a  cat 
in  any  manner  whatsoever;  once  between  the  cat's  paws,  it 
knows  there  is  but  one  resource,  to  run  away ;  still  the  animal 
ultimately,  and  in  especial  at  the  period  of  courtship,  learns 
to  recognize  the  power  of  caresses  and  attentions ;  it  does  not, 
however,  occur  to  him  to  employ  these  means  toward  any  but 
individuals  of  the  same  species.  Moreover,  the  animals  must 
be  social  before  the  language  of  manners  can  attain  even  a 
very  humble  degree  of  development ;  the  animal  confines 
itself  generally  to  caresses  with  the  tongue,  with  the  head, 
with  the  tail.  Evidently,  also,  such  means  would  be  inappro- 
priate in  regard  to  beings  which  did  not  possess  a  hide  and 
coat  of  hair ;  an  animal  would  not  lick  a  tree  or  a  stone,  even 
if  it  attributed  to  them  an  unwonted  degree  of  power.  So 
that  even  if  the  brute,  as  Auguste  Comte  supposed,  really  pos- 
sessed fetichistic  conceptions  more  or  less  vague,  it  would 
experience  a  complete  inability  to  manifest  its  goodwill  in 
any  manner  whatsoever  toward  its  rudimentary  fetiches. 

Superstitious  fear  is  one  of  the  elements  of  religion  which, 
after  all,  is  well  within  the  capacity  of  an  animal,  but  this  fear 
cannot  in  an  animal  produce  even  the  first  steps  of  an  embryo 
cult.  An  animal  is  ignorant  of  the  means  of  touching,  of 
captivating,  of  the  infinitely  complex  language  of  affection  and 
reverence.     Comparatively  inaccessible  to  pity  himself,  he  has 


74        GEA'ESIS   OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

no  notion  how  to  act  to  excite  pity  in  another  ;  the  conception 
of  a  gift,  of  an  offering,  so  essential  to  the  relations  of  men  to 
each  other  and  to  their  gods  is,  save  in  rare  instances,  to  it 
unknown.  The  most  primitive  cult  is  always  essentially 
a  counterfeit  of  an  advanced  social  state ;  an  imitation,  in  an 
imaginary  commerce  with  the  gods,  of  a  commerce  already 
existing  among  men  united  by  complex  ties.  '  Religion  implies 
a  nascent  art  of  sociabilit3%  an  elementary  acquaintance  with 
the  springs  which  regulate  the  conduct  of  beings  in  society  \ 
there  is  a  certain  rhetoric  in  prayer,  in  genuflections  and  pros- 
trations. Everything  of  that  kind  is  far  beyond  the  range  of 
the  lower  animals.  One  may  discover  among  them,  however, 
some  traces  of  the  process  of  evolution  which  man  must  have 
followed.  It  is,  in  especial,  under  domestication  that  an  ani- 
mal's manners  reach  their  highest  development.  Their  asso- 
ciation with  a  superior  being  resembles,  more  closely  than 
anything  else  in  nature,  the  state  in  which  primitive  man 
believed  himself  to  live  with  his  gods.  The  dog  seems  at 
times  to  put  up  a  veritable  prayer  to  the  master  who  is  beat- 
ing it,  when  it  crawls  at  his  feet  and  whimpers.  This  attitude, 
however,  provoked  by  the  fear  of  a  blow,  is  perhaps  in  a  large 
measure  instinctive  and  not  reflectively  designed  to  excite 
pity.  The  true  prayer  of  the  dog  consists  in  licking  the  hand 
which  wounds  him  ;  the  story  is  well  known  of  the  dog  that 
licked  the  fingers  of  his  master  while  the  latter  was  pitilessly 
practising  upon  him  an  experiment  in  vivisection.  I  myself 
observed  an  analogous  fact  in  an  enormous  dog  from  the 
Pyrenees  whose  eye  I  had  to  cauterize  ;  he  might  have  crushed 
my  hand,  and  he  simply  licked  it  feverishly.  It  is  almost  an 
example  of  religious  submission  ;  the  sentiment  which  is 
observable  in  embrj-o  in  the  dog  is  the  same  as  that  which  in 
its  complete  development  appears  in  the  Psalms  and  the  book 
of  Job.  The  lower  animals  display  such  a  sentim.ent  toward 
no  other  being  but  man.  As  to  man  himself,  he  displays  it 
only  toward  his  gods,  toward  an  absolute  chief  or  a  father. 
Profound,  however,  as  this  sentiment  is  in  some  animals,  their 
expression  of  it  is  quite  imperfect  ;  though  I  remember  a  case 
in   which   the   action    of   licking,  so   habitual   with    dogs,  was 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  75 

almost  like  a  human  kiss.     I  was  embracing  my  mother,  at  the 

door  of   the  house,  before   leaving   for  a  journey,  when   my 

Pyrenees  dog  ran   up  to   us,  and,  placing  his  paws  upon  our 

shoulders  literally  kissed  both  of  us.     From  that  time  on  (we 

have   tried  the  experiment)  he   never  sees   us   embrace  each 

other  without  coming  to  demand  his  kiss. 

Another  well-known  fact,  and  worthy  of  remark,  is  the  fol- 

lowinsr:    when    a   doij   or   even    a   cat    has   committed    some 

reprehensible   act,   has   eaten   the   roast   or  done 

Notion  of  something    clumsy,    it    comes    toward    one    with 

Compensation,  o  y 

a  thousand  little  attentions ;  in  so  much  that  i 
have  found  myself  able  to  divine  when  my  dog  had  committed 
a  peccadillo  simply  by  observing  his  unwonted  demonstrations 
of  friendship.  The  animal  hopes  therefore,  by  force  of  his 
social  graces  and  attentions,  to  prevent  his  master  from  holding 
a  grudge  against  him,  to  deprecate  the  wrath  that  his  culpable 
conduct  ought  legitimately  to  arouse,  and  to  awaken  in  its 
stead  some  degree  of  benevolence  by  his  demonstrations  of 
submission  and  affection.  This  notion  of  compensation 
becomes  later  an  important  element  in  the  religious  cult.  The 
Neapolitan  brigand  who  dedicates  a  wax  candle  to  the  altar  of 
the  Virgin ;  the  mediaeval  lord,  who,  after  having  killed  his  next 
of  kin,  rears  a  chapel  to  some  saint  ,  the  hermit  who  lacerates 
his  chest  with  his  hair  shirt  in  order  to  avoid  the  more 
redoubtable  pangs  of  hell,  reason  precisely  after  the  same 
fashion  as  my  dog  ,  they  are  endeavouring,  like  him,  to  con- 
ciliate their  judge,  and,  to  be  quite  frank,  to  corrupt  him  ,  for 
superstition  rests  in  a  great  measure  upon  the  belief  that  it  is 
possible  to  corrupt  God. 

The  most  difficult  notion  to  discover  among  animals  is  that 

of  the  voluntary  and   conscious  gift;  the  solidarity  observed 

among  certain  insects,  for  example  the  ant,  which 

Notion  ofoon-      causes  them  to  hold  all  their  goods  in  common, 

scions  gift.  ^  .        ^        . 

is   something   too   instinctive   and    irrenective;    a 

veritable  gift  must  address  itself  to  some  determinate  person, 

and   not   to  an  entire   society;  it  must   possess  a  degree   of 

spontaneity  that   excludes  any  hypothesis  of   pure   instinct  ; 

and  finally,  it  must  be  as  far  as  possible  a  sign  of  affection, 


76        G£X£S/S  OF  RELIGJOXS  I.V  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

a  symbol.  And  the  more  symbolic  its  character,  the  more 
religious,  properly  speaking,  it  will  be  ;  religious  offerings  are 
more  than  anything  else  a  symbolic  testimony  of  respect ; 
piety  scarcely  plays  a  part  in  them,  one  does  not  in  general 
believe  that  they  answer  to  any  real  need  on  the  part  of  the 
gods,  one  believes  that  they  will  be  rather  accepted  by  them 
than  seized  upon  with  avidity.  The  notion  of  a  gift,  therefore, 
presupposes  a  certain  delicacy  artd  refinement.  Some  germ  of 
this  sentiment,  however,  we  discover  precisely  in  a  dog' 
observed  by  Mr.  Spencer.  This  dog,  a  very  intelligent  and 
very  valuable  spaniel,  met  one  morning,  after  an  absence  of 
some  hours,  a  person  of  whom  he  was  very  fond.  He  ampli- 
fied his  ordinary  greeting  by  an  addition  which  was  not 
habitual  ;  he  drew  back  his  lips  in  a  sort  of  smile,  and,  once 
out  of  doors,  offered  other  demonstrations  of  fidelity.  As  a 
hunter  he  had  been  trained  to  bring  game  to  his  master.  He 
no  doubt  regretted  that  there  w^as  no  game  at  the  moment  for 
him  to  bring  as  a  means  of  expressing  his  affection  ,  however 
he  rummaged  about,  and  seizing  presently  a  dead  leaf,  carried 
it  to  his  master  with  a  multitude  of  caressing  gestures.'  Evi- 
dently the  leaf  possessed  for  the  dog  no  more  than  a  symbolic 
value  .  he  knew  that  it  was  his  duty  to  retrieve  game,  and  that 
the  action  of  retrieving  gave  pleasure  to  his  master,  and  he 
wished  to  accomplish  this  action  under  his  eyes  ,  as  to  the 
object  itself  it  made  little  difference  ;  it  was  his  goodwill  that 
he  wished  to  show  The  dead  leaf  was  a  veritable  offering,  it 
possessed  a  sort  of  moral  value. 

Thus  animals  may  acquire,  by  contact  with  man,  a  certain 
number  of  sentiments  which  enter  later  into  human  religion. 
Elements  of  '^^^  monkey  in  this  respect,  as  in  all  others, 
which  religion  seems  much  in  advance  of  the  other  animals, 
within^the  r^each  Even  in  the  savage  state  a  number  of  simiae  dis- 
of  the  lower  play   gestures    of    supplication  to  deprecate  the 

firing  of  a  gun  at  them :  '^  They  possess  the 
sentiment  of  pity,  since  they  ascribe  it  to  others.  Who  knows 
but  that  there  may  be  in  this  mute  prayer  more  of  real  relig- 

'  H.  Spencer,  Appendix  to  the  Principles  of  Sociology. 
'  Brehm,  Revue  scientifique,  p.  974,  1874. 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSi    S.  77 

ious  sentiment  than  exists  sometimes  in  the  psittacism  of  cer- 
tain believers?  Animals  in  general  employ  in  their  relations 
with  man  the  maximum  of  the  means  of  expression  at  their 
disposal,  and  it  is  not  their  fault  if  the  means  are  limited  ;  they 
seem  to  consider  man  as  a  really  royal  being,  a  thing  apart  in 
nature.'  Must  one  conclude,  as  is  sometimes  done,  that  man 
is  a  god  in  the  eyes  of  the  rest  of  the  animal  kingdom  ?  Not 
altogether ;  the  lower  animals  see  man  too  close  ;  even  in 
an  embryonic  religion  one  must  not  be  able  to  touch  God 
with  one's  finger;  in  religion  as  in  art,  there  is  an  advantage  in 
perspective.  My  dog  and  I  are  companions;  sometimes  he  is 
jealous,  sometimes  he  pouts.  I  am  unhappily  in  no  respect, 
in  his  eyes,  on  a  pedestal.  There  are,  however,  evidently 
exceptions,  cases  in  which  the  master  seems  to  preserve  his 
prestige.  I  believe  that  under  certain  circumstances  man  has 
appeared  to  some  members  of  the  lower  animals  as  endowed 
with  a  power  so  extraordinary  that  he  must  have  awakened 
some  vague  religious  sentiments  ;  if  man  is  sometimes  a  god 
to  his  fellow-men,  he  may  well  be  so  to  the  lower  animals.  I 
am  aware  that  in  the  judgment  of  certain  philosophers,  and 
even  of  certain  men  of  science,  religion  is  the  exclusive  appan- 
age of  the  human  race,  but  up  to  this  point  we  have  found  in 
primitive  religion  no  more  than  a  certain  number  of  simple 
ideas,  not  one  of  which,  taken  separately,  is  above  the  reach  of 
the  lower  animals.  Just  as  industry,  art,  language,  and  reason, 
so  religion  also  has  its  roots  in  the  nebulous  and  confused  con- 
sciousness of  the  animal.  The  animal,  however,  rises  to  such 
ideas  only  at  moments.  He  is  unable  to  maintain  himself  at 
their  level,  to  synthesize  them,  to  reduce  them  to  a  system. 
His  attention  is  too  mobile  for  him  to  regulate  his  conduct  by 
them.  Even  if  an  animal  were  quite  as  capable  of  conceiv- 
ing a  god  as  is  the  lowest  of  savages,  he  would  remain  forever 
incapable  of  a  religious  cult. 

We  have  seen  that  the  birth  of  religion  is  not  a  species  of 
theatrical  effect  in  nature,  that  preparation  is  being  made  for 
it  among  the  higher  animals,  and  that  man  himself  achieves  it 

'  Espinas,  Societih  animales,  p.  i8i. 


78        GEA'ESIS  OF  RELIGIONS  IX  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

gradually,  and  without  shock.     In  this  rapid  effort  to  trace  the 

genesis  of  primitive  religions,  we  have  found  no  need  to  rely 

„  .  .  .  upon  the  conceptions  of  the  soul,  of  spirit,  of  the 

Primitive  re-  '  *  , 

ligion  a  para-        infinite,  of  a  first  cause,  nor  upon  any  metaphys- 
physics.  i^^j  sentiment.     These  ideas  are    of    later  date  ; 

they  are  the  product  of  religion,  rather  than  the  roots  of  it- 
The  basis  of  religion  was  in  the  beginning  quite  positive  and 
natural ;  religion  is  simply  a  mythical  and  sociomorphic 
theory  of  the  physical  universe,  and  it  is  only  at  its  summit,* 
at  an  advanced  degree  of  evolution,  that  it  comes  into  contact 
with  metaphysics.  Religion  lies  beyond  and  at  the  side  of 
science.  Superstition,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word,  and  1 
primitive  religion  were  one,  and  it  is  not  without  reason  that 
Lucretius  compares  the  two  :  re!iigio,  superstitio.  To  be  pres- 
ent at  the  birth  of  religion  is  to  perceive  an  erroneous  scien- 
tific conception,  gathering  other  errors  or  incomplete  verities 
to  itself,  entering  into  one  body  of  belief  with  them,  and  ulti- 
mately, little  by  little,  subordinating  them.  The  earliest 
religions  were  systematized  and  organized  superstitions.  Be 
it  added  that  in  our  judgment  superstition  consists  simply  in 
an  ill-conducted  scientific  induction,  in  a  mistaken  effort  of 
human  reason ;  and  we  do  not  wish  to  be  understood  as  in- 
tending by  that  the  mere  play  of  the  imagination  ;  we  do  not 
wish  to  be  understood  as  holding  that  religion  is  founded  in  the 
last  resort  on  a  species  of  recreation  of  the  mind.  How  often 
the  birth  of  religion  has  been  attributed  to  an  alleged  appetite 
for  the  marvellous,  for  the  extraordinary,  which  is  supposed  to 
seize  upon  young  peoples  as  upon  infants !  A  singularly  arti- 
ficial explanation  for  a  very  natural  and  profound  tendency. 
To  say  the  truth,  what  primitive  peoples  were  in  search  of 
when  they  built  up  their  different  religions  was  an  explana- 
tion, and  the  least  surprising  explanation  possible,  the  explana- 
tion most  in  harmony  with  their  rude  intelligence,  the  most 
rational  explanation.  It  was  infinitely  less  marvellous  for  an 
ancient  to  suppose  that  the  thunder  came  from  the  hand  of 
Indra  or  of  Jupiter,  than  to  believe  it  to  be  the  product  of  a 
certain  force  called  electricity;  the  myth  was  for  him  a  much 
more  satisfying  explanation  ;  it  was  the   most   plausible   one 


RELIGIOUS  PHYSICS.  79 

that  he  could  hit  upon,  given  his  intellectual  habitat.  So  that 
if  science  consists  in  relating  things,  Jupiter  and  Jehovah  may 
be  regarded  as  rudimentary  scientific  conceptions.  If  they 
are  no  longer  such,  the  reason  is  simply  that  we  have  discov- 
ered the  natural  and  regular  laws  which  supersede  them. 
When  a  task,  so  to  speak,  begins  to  perform  itself,  one  dis- 
misses the  employee  who  had  previously  been  charged  with 
it  ;  but  one  should  be  careful  not  to  say  that  he  was  previously 
good  for  nothing,  that  he  had  been  stationed  there  by  caprice 
or  by  favour.  If  our  gods  seem  nowadays  to  be  purely  hon- 
orary, the  fact  was  otherwise  at  a  previous  period.  Religions 
are  not  the  work  of  caprice  ;  they  correspond  to  an  invincible 
tendency  in  man,  and  sometimes  in  the  lower  animals,  to  try 
to  understand  what  passes  before  his  eyes.  Religion  is  nas- 
cent science,  and  it  was  with  purely  physical  problems  that  it 
at  first  essayed  to  grapple.  It  was  a  physics  a  cot^,  a  para- 
physics,  before  becoming  a  science  aii  dela,  a  metaphysics. 


CHAPTER  II. 

RELIGIOUS    METAPHYSICS. 

I.  Animism  or  polydemonism — Formation  of  the  dualist  concep- 

tion of  spirit — Social  relations  with  spirits. 

II.  Providence  and  miracles — The  evolution  of  the  dualist  con- 
ception of  a  special  providence — The  conception  of  miracles — 
The  supernatural  and  the  natural — Scientific  explanation  and 
miracles — Social  and  moral  modifications  in  the  character  of 
man  owing  to  supposed  social  relations  with  a  special  provi- 
dence— Increasing  sentiment  of  irresponsibility  and  passivity 
and  "  absolute  dependence." 

III.  The  creation — Genesis  of  the  notion  of  creation — The  dual- 
istic  elements  in  this  idea — Monism — Classification  of  systems  of 
religious  metaphysics — Criticism  of  the  classification  proposed 
by  Von  Hartmann — Criticism  of  the  classification  proposed  by 
Auguste  Comte. 

/.  Animism. 

The  upshot  of  the  preceding  chapter  is  that  every  reHgion 

in  its  beginning  consisted  of  a  mistaken  system  of  physics;  and 

T     „.    ^      J    between  a  mistaken  system  of  physics  and  certain 
Legitimate  and  _     ■'  >■     -^ 

illegitimate  meta-  forms  of  metaphysics  there  is  often  no  difference 
^  ^*^°^"  but  one  of  degree  simply.     Magnify  some  scien- 

tific error,  reduce  it  to  a  system,  explain  heav^en  and  earth 
by  it,  and  it  will  be  a  metaphysics — in  the  bad  sense.  What- 
ever one  universaHzes — error  or  truth — acquires  metaphys- 
ical significance,  and  possibly  it  is  more  easy  to  universalize 
in  this  way  the  false  than  the  true  ;  truth  possesses  always 
a  greater  concreteness  than  error,  and  therefore  offers  greater 
resistance  to  arbitrary  fashioning.  Let  a  modern  man  of 
science  develop  his  knowledge  as  he  will,  and  enlarge  the 
circle  of  known  phenomena  ;  so  long  as  he  holds  vigorously  by 
scientific  methods  he  will  never  be  able  to  pass  at  a  bound 
from  the  sphere  of  phenomena  to  the  sphere  of  things  in 
themselves.     The   conscientious  man   of  science    is    prisoned 

80 


RELIGIOUS  METAPHYSICS.  8r 

within  the  limits  of  knowledge,  his  thought  has  no  outlet. 
Rut  let  him  once  break  the  chain  of  logic  which  confines  him, 
and  behold  him  free.  His  false  hypothesis  grows  without 
obstacle  or  check  from  reality  ;  he  lands  at  a  bound  up  to  his 
neck  in  metaphysics.  The  fact  is,  one  may  arrive  at  a  system 
of  metaphysics  in  two  ways — incontinently,  by  a  logical  solecism 
and  an  exaggeration  of  some  false  premise  ad  infinitiivi,  or 
by  following  the  chain  of  known  truth  to  the  point  at  which 
it  disappears  in  eternal  night,  and  by  endeavouring  to  peer 
into  the  darkness  by  the  light  of  hypothesis  :  in  the  first  case 
metaphysics  is  simply  a  logically  developed  mistake  which 
g.iins  in  magnitude  what  it  loses  in  reality,  an  illegitimate 
negation  of  science  ;  in  the  second  case  it  is  a  hypothetical 
extension  of  truth,  in  some  sort  a  legitimate  supplement  to 
science. 

We  are  approaching  the  moment  when  religious  physics 
became  transformed  into  metaphysics  ;  the  period  when  the 
gods  retreated  from  phenomenon  to  phenomenon,  and  took 
refuge  ultimately  in  the  supersensible  ;  the  period  when 
heaven  and  earth  first  became  distinct  and  separate  ;  although, 
to  be  quite  accurate,  the  distinguishing  characteristic  of  reli- 
gion even  at  the  present  day  is  an  incoherent  mixture  of 
physics  and  metaphysics,  of  anthropomorphic  or  sociomorphic 
theories  in  regard  to  nature  and  to  the  supernatural.  The 
foundation  of  every  primitive  religion  is  reasoning  by  analogy, 
that  is  to  say,  the  vaguest  and  least  sound  of  logical  methods. 
At  a  later  date  the  mass  of  naive  analogies  constituting  any 
one  religion  is  criticised  and  systematized  and  completed  by 
tentative  induction  or  regular  deduction. 

Man,  as  we  have  seen,  begins  by  creating  a  natural  society, 

including  animals,  plants,  and  even  minerals,  which  he  endows 

„  ,   ,  .  with  a  life  similar  to  his  own  :  he  believes  himself 

Primitive  meta- 
physics a  fetich-   to  be  in  cornmunication  with  them  in  matters  of 

istic  monism,  volition  ancff  ntention,  just  as  he  is  in  communi- 
cation with  other  men  and  animals.  But  in  thus  projecting 
something  analogous  to  his  own  life,  to  his  power  of  volition 
and  of  his  social  relations  and   responsibilities,  into  the  exist- 


82        GENESIS  OF  A'EL/G/OJVS  LV  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

ence  of  external  things,  he  does  not,  at  first,  dream  of  any 
distinction  between  the  animating  principle  and  the  body 
which  it  animates;  he  conceives  as  yet  no  such  distinction 
in  his  own  case.  .  The  earliest  stage  of  religious  meta- 
physics, therefore,  is  not  a  sort  of  vague  monism  relative  to  the 
divine  principle,  the  indwelling  divinity  of  things,  to  Ssiov,  as 
Messrs.  Miiller  and  Von  Hartmann  affirm,  but  a  vague  monism 
in  regard  to  the  soul  and  body,  which  at  first  are  conceived  as 
one.     The  whole  world  is  a  society  of  living  bodies. 

The  conception  which  is  most  analogous  to  the  preceding 

is  that  of  distinct  and  separate  souls  animating  each  its  body, 

of  spirits  capable   of  quitting  each  its   dwelling- 

dudTrcanfmism.   pl^ce.     It  is  thi^  that  historians  of  religion  mean 

Separate  exist-      by   animism.      What  is  remarkable  in  this  con- 

ence  of  the  soul.      '        ^.         --^ii-^-        i  -  t^  i.-        i.i 

ception  IS  Its  duahstic  character.     It  contams  the 

germ  of  the  opposition  between  soul  and  body.  The  dualistic 
conception  arises  slowly  from  a  number  of  naive  analogies. 
The  first  are  borrowed  from  the  fact  of  respiration.  Does  not 
one  fairly  hear  the  departure  of  the  breath  animating  a  living 
body,  in  what  one  calls  the  last  gasp  ?  Other  analogies  are 
borrowed  from  the  physical  fact  of  the  shadow  cast  by  the 
sun  ;  one  seems  to  see  the  spirit  marching  side  by  side  with 
the  body,  and  even  changing  its  place  when  the  body  is 
motionless.  Shadow  has  played  a  large  role  in  the  para- 
physics  of  primitive  peoples;  shadows  people  the  other 
world.  In  the  third  place,  during  sleep  it  is  incontestable, 
on  the  premises  that  primitive  man  has  at  his  disposal, 
that  the  spirit  sometimes  makes  long  journeys,  for  the  sleeper 
often  recollects  wandering,  hunting,  or  making  war  in  distant 
countries,  at  a  time  when  his  companions  are  perfectly  aware 
that  his  body  has  lain  motionless.  Fainting  also  seems  to  be 
a  case  in  which  something  dwelling  in  us  suddenly  leaves  and 
presently  comes  back  again.  Lethargy  is  a  more  striking 
example  of  the  same  thing.  Visions  in  delirium,  hallucinations 
in  madness,  or  even  in  dreams,  deal  wmi  beings  who  are  invisible 
to  others  ;  fantastic  beings  who  appear  to  savages  as  real  as  any 
others.  Also  it  is  well  known  that  fools  and  innocents  were 
regarded,  until   modern  times,  as  inspired  and  sacred.     Other 


RELIGIOUS  METAPHYSICS.  83 

nervous  maladies — hysteria, "  possession,"  somnambulism — add 
their  quota  of  precision  to  the  conception  of  a  spirit  animating 
the  body,  dwelling  in  it,  quitting  it  more  or  less  at  will, 
tormenting  it,  etc. 

Thus,  by  degrees,  there  arises  the  conception  of  a  subtle 
mode  of  being  eluding  touch,  and  commonly  vision  even, 
capable  of  a  life  independent  of  the  body  it  inhabits,  and  more 
powerful  than  the  body.  Man  comes  to  believe  himself  to  be 
living  in  a  society  with  beings  other  than  those  who  appeal 
directly  and  grossly  to  his  senses  ;  he  believes  himself  to  be 
living  in  a  society  of  spirits. 

That  is  not  all.     The  problem  of  death    early  engaged  the 

attention  of  primitive  people.     They  considered  it  altogether 

as  a  physical  affair;  they  explained  it,  as  Messrs. 
Ghosts.        _   ,  ^   -^     .    ^  ..  ,,  T  •     X    1 

Tylor   and  Spencer    (followmg    Lucretius)   have 

shown,  by  a  number  of  inductions  drawn  from  observations  on 
sleep,  lethargy,  and  dream.  A  sleeping  body  awakes,  it  seems 
to  follow  that  a  dead  body  will  awake  ;  that  is  the  line  of 
reasoning.  Moreover,  the  dead  come  back  in  dreams,  or  in  the 
demi-hallucinations  of  the  night  and  of  fear.  The  modern 
conception  of  pure  spirit  is  an  indirect  and  later  consequence 
of  a  belief  in  immortality,  it  is  not  itself  the  principle  of 
it.  A  cult  for  the  dead,  for  the  manes,  as  the  Romans  said,  is 
partly  explicable  on  moral  or  psychological  grounds,  as,  for 
example,  by  a  prolongation  of  filial  respect  and  fear,  and 
partly  on  grounds  altogether  material  and  gross.  A  cult  for 
the  dead  rests  on  a  naive  theory  based  on  sentiment ;  it  is  semi- 
physical  and  semi-psychological.  The  nature  of  a  departed 
soul  has  been  conceived  in  very  different  ways.  Among  the 
Dakota  Indians  of  North  America,  one's  double  goes  up  into 
the  air,  one's  tJiird  rejoins  the  spirits,  one's  fourth  and  last  soul 
stays  by  the  body  ;  an  instance  of  a  very  complicated  theory 
formed  out  of  elements  altogether  primitive.  In  general,  the 
belief  is  that  the  souls  of  the  dead  go  to  join  ancestral  souls  in 
another  world,  which  is  commonly  a  distant  land  from  which  the 
tribe  has  migrated  in  former  times — affording  an  example  of 
a  social  tie  which  survives  death.  The  Greeks  and  Romans 
believed    that,    if    the    body    was    deprived    of    sepulture,    its 


84        GEXES/S  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

shadow  could  not  penetrate  into  its  proper  place  of  abode ; 
it  remained  on  earth  and  haunted  the  living — a  remnant  of 
former  beliefs  in  the  necessity  of  sepulture  and  the  mainte- 
nance of  friendly  relations  with  the  society  of  the  dead.' 

The  dead  were  to  be  conciliated  by  the  same  means  as  the 

living,  by  supplications  and  gifts.     The  gifts  were  the  same  as 

.    ,    .    ,        those  which   are  acceptable  to  the   living — food, 

Analogies  be-  ^  t-w    i 

tween  ghosts  and  amis,  costumes,  horses,  servants.  In  Dahomey, 
living  people.  ^^.j^^^^  ^  ,.j,^g  dies,  a  hundred  of  his  soldiers  are- 
immolated  on  his  tomb  as  a  body  guard.  Much  the  same 
thing  was  done  among  the  Incas  of  Peru.  At  Bali  all  the 
women  of  the  harem  are  immolated  upon  the  grave  of  the 
defunct  sultan.  In  Homer,  Achilles  slaughtered  his  Trojan 
prisoners  on  the  funeral  pyre  of  Patroclus,  together  with  the 
horses  and  the  dogs  of  his  dead  friend.  The  Fiji  islanders 
used  to  immolate  a  man  at  the  foot  of  each  pillar  in  the  home 
of  a  chief,  as  a  guard  for  the  edifice.  In  our  days,  spirits  are 
still  so  numerous,  in  the  eyes  of  certain  people,  that  an  Arab, 
for  example,  when  he  throws  a  stone,  breathes  an  apology  to 
such  spirits  as  he  may  strike.'  The  universe  is  populated  by 
anthropomorphic  societies. 

It  was  to  spirits  that  the  care  of  one's  vengeances  was  con- 
fided.    According   to    Tylor,   two    Brahmans,  believing   that 
„       „  a    man   had   robbed   them  of  fifty  rupees,  took 

Care  of  ven-  _  j  r         ^ 

geance  committed  their  own  mother  and,  with  her  consent,  cut  off 
*°  ^  °^*^'  her  head  in  order  that  her  shadow  might  torment 

and  pursue  the  robber  till  death.  Among  the  Alfourous  of 
Moluccas  children  are  buried  alive  up  to  the  neck,  and  left 
there  under  the  scorching  sun  with  their  mouths  full  of 
pepper  and  salt,  so  that,  dying  in  an  agony  of  thirst,  their 
souls  may  go  in  a  state  of  fury  in  search  of  the  enemy 
against  whom  they  have  been  sent.  It  is  always  some 
social  exigency,  some  hatred,  some  vengeance,  some  pun- 
ishment, that  leads  one  to  enter  into  commerce  with 
spirits. 

'  See  the  author's   Morale  d' Epicure  (Des  idees  antiques  stir  la  mart)  3d  edi- 
tion, p.  105. 

'  See  Le  Bon,  L' Homme  et  les  Soci^th,  t.  ii. 


RELIGIOUS  METAPHYSICS.  85 

In  effect,  all  historical  treatises  unite  to  show  that  animism 

or  polydemonism  has  at  one  time  or  other  been  universal.  ,  It 

immediately    succeeded    fetichism     or    concrete 

ummary.       naturism,  the  primitive  belief,  in  which  animating 

soul  and  animated  body  were  not  distinguished. 

A  belief  in  separately  existing  spirits,  or  spiritism,  as  Mr. 
Spencer  calls  it,  which  contains  the  germ  of  the  belief  in  revis- 
itants  from  the  other  world,  constitutes  the  primitive  origin 
of  the  more  refined  metaphysical  system  called  spiritualism. 
This  last  system,  founded  also  upon  the  notion  of  the  funda- 
mental duality  of  man,  and  of  every  living  being,  leads  to  the 
notion  of  a  society  of  spirits. 

Let  us  now  consider  the  inherent  necessity  under  which 
animism  lies  of  developing  into  theism. 

//.  Providence  and  Miracles. 

From  the  notion  of  a  spirit  to  that  of  a  divinity  is  but  one 

step.     It  suffices  to  conceive  the  spirit  as  sufficiently  powerful 

,    ^  ,     and  redoubtable  to  reduce  us  in  some  considera- 
From  ghosts  to  c    ■   • 

divinity  a  single  ble  measure  to  a  state  of  dependence.  Spirits, 
^^®P'  manes,  gods,  subsist  in  the  beginning  on  an  indis- 

tinct sentiment  of  terror.  The  instant  that  spirits  can  separate 
themselves  from  the  body  and  perform  mysterious  actions  of 
which  we  are  incapable,  they  begin  to  be  divine  ;  it  is  for  this 
reason  that  death  may  change  a  man  into  a  species  of  god. 

Spirits  are  not  only  powerful,  however ;  they  are  also  clair- 
voyant, prevoyant — they  are  acquainted  with  things  that  lie 
T,     ,        ,  »  beyond   our  knowledge.     ]\Iore  than   that,  they 

Development  of  -'  °  •' 

notion  of  special  are  benevolent  or  hostile;  they  are  related  to  us 
providence,  j^^    various   social   or  antisocial  ways.     Here  we 

have  the  elements  of  the  notion  of  divine  providence.  The 
second  semi-metaphysical  idea,  which  lies  in  germ  at  the 
bottom  of  every  religion,  is,  therefore,  this  of  perspicacious 
spirits,  of  favouring  or  unfavouring  deities,  of  providences. 
"  This  being  is  well  or  ill  disposed  toward  me  ;  he  may  work 
me  good  or  harm."  Such  is  the  first  naive  formulation  of 
the  theory  of  divine  providence.     One   must  not  expect  to 


86        GEiVESIS  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE   SOCIETIES. 

find,  in  the  beginning,  the  notion  of  a  general,  directing  intelli- 
gence, but  simply  that  of  a  social  tie  between  particular  volun- 
tary, well-disposed  or  ill-disposed  beings.  The  notion  of 
providence,  like  all  other  religious  notions,  was  at  first  a 
superstition.  A  savage,  on  his  way  to  some  undertaking, 
meets  a  serpent  and  succeeds  in  his  enterprise  ;  it  was  the 
serpent  that  brought  him  luck:  behold  a  providential  acci- 
dent I  Gamblers  at  the  present  time  are  quite  as  superstitious. 
The  fetich  theory  of  providence  still  subsists,  in  the  belief  ih 
medals,  scapularies,  and  so  forth.'  Observation  inevitably 
results  in  the  perception  of  causal  relations  among  phe- 
nomena ;  the  trouble  is,  simply,  that  to  the  primitive  mind 
every  coincidence  appears  to  be  a  cause  ;  post  hoc,  ergo  propter 
hoc.  Any  object  that  is  a  party  to  any  such  coincidence  is 
a  lucky  object,  good  to  have  in  one's  power,  a  portable  provi- 

'  A  belief  in  relics,  pushed  so  far  by  the  earlier  Christians  and  by  so  many 
Catholics  to-day,  is,  too,  a  sort  of  faith  in  fetiches  or  amulets.  From  the  earliest 
period  of  Christianity  the  faithful  were  accustomed  to  go  to  the  Holy  Land  to 
obtain  water  from  the  Jordan,  and  gather  dust  from  the  soil  that  the  feet  of  Christ 
had  trod,  and  to  break  pieces  from  the  true  cross,  which  St.  Paulin  of  Nole  says, 
"  possesses  in  all  its  parts  a  vital  force  in  so  much  that  although  its  wood  be  every 
day  clipped  off  by  innumerable  pilgrims,  it  remains  intact."  Relics  are  supposed 
not  only  to  cure  the  body,  but  the  soul  of  those  who  touch  them  :  Gregory  sent  to 
a  barbarous  king  the  chains  that  had  served  to  manacle  the  apostle  Paul  ;  assuring 
him  that  the  same  chains  which  had  manacled  the  body  of  the  saint  could  deliver 
the  heart  from  sin. 

This  superstition  for  relics,  common  in  the  Middle  Ages,  was  held  in  ail  its 
naivete  by  Bishop  Gregory  of  Tours.  He  relates  that  one  day  when  he  was  suffer- 
ing from  a  pain  in  the  temples,  a  touch  from  the  hangings  about  the  tomb  of  St. 
Martin  cured  him.  He  repeated  the  experiment  three  times  with  equal  success. 
Once,  he  tells,  he  was  attacked  by  a  mortal  dysentery  ;  he  drank  a  glass  of  water 
in  which  he  had  dissolved  a  pinch  of  dust  scraped  up  on  the  tomb  of  the  saint,  and 
his  health  was  restored.  One  day  a  bone  stuck  in  his  throat,  he  began  praying  and 
groaning,  and  kneeled  before  the  tomb  ;  he  stretched  out  his  hand  and  touched  the 
hangings  and  the  bone  disappeared.  "  I  do  not  know,"  he  says,  "what  became 
of  it,  for  I  neither  threw  it  up  nor  felt  it  pass  downward  into  my  stomach."  At 
another  time  his  tongue  became  swollen  and  tumefied  ;  he  licked  the  railing  of  the 
tomb  of  St.  Martin  and  his  tongue  became  of  its  natural  size.  St.  Martin's  relics 
go  the  length  even  of  curing  toothache.  "  Oh,  ineffable  theriac  !  "  cries  Gregory 
of  Tours,  "  ineffable  pigment  !  admirable  antidote  !  celestial  purge  !  superior  to  all 
the  drugs  of  the  faculty  !  sweeter  than  aromatics,  stronger  than  all  unguents 
together  !  Thou  cleanest  the  stomach  like  scammony,  the  lungs  like  hyssop  ;  thou 
purgest  the  head  like  pyrethrig." 


RELIGIOUS  METAPHYSICS.  87 

dence,  so  to  speak.  Thus  there  arises  the  notion  of  a  destiny, 
a  bias  in  phenomena  toward  good  or  evil,  which  imposes  itself 
upon  the  previously  existing  conception  of  nature  as  animated 
or  peopled  by  spirits.  The  post  hoc,  ergo  propter  hoc — that  is 
to  say,  the  belief  in  the  influence  of  phenomena  immediately 
preceding  or  concomitant  to  the  main  event,  and  in  the  influ- 
ence of  a  present  action  upon  some  future  event — is  the  germ 
of  superstitions  both  in  regard  to  providence  and  to  destiny. 
And  out  of  the  idea  of  destiny,  of  fortune,  of  necessity,  grows 
in  process  of  time  the  scientific  notion  of  determinism  and 
universal  reciprocity. 

Little  by  little,  by  the  growth  of  experience,  man  achieves 
the  conception    of  an    orderly  subordination  among  the  dif- 
ferent voluntary   beings  with   whom  he   peoples 

Systematic  ^  _         .  ... 

subordmation         the  earth,  a  sort  of   unification  of  special  provi- 

among  the  gods,      fences,  a   more   or  less  regular  organization    of 
the  world.     Responsibility   for  current    events  retreats    from 
cause  to  cause  into  the  distance,  from  powerful  being  to  still 
more  powerful  being  ;  primitive  man  still  insists  on  believing 
that  every  event  is  still  the  sign,  the  expression  of  a  volition. 
Once    more  his  faith  is  dualistic  :  he  conceives  the  world  as 
dependent  upon  the  will  of  some  one  or  more  superior  beings 
who  direct  it,  or  suspend  at  need  the  ordinary  course  of  things. 
It  is  at  this  stage  in  the  evolution  of  religion  that  the  con- 
ception of  miracles  appears.     The  notion  of  miracles  is  at  first 
very  vague   in  primitive  religions  ;  the  period  at 
Development  of    ^^.j^j^j^    ^j^j^    ^q^^q^    begins     to    become    definite 

oelief  la  miracle.  ° 

marks    the    initiation    of    a    further    step    in    the 

development  of  religion.  If,  in  effect,  the  marvellous  has  in 
all  times  formed  a  necessary  element  in  the  constitution,  it 
did  not  possess  in  the  beginning  the  same  character  as  now- 
adays ;  it  was  not  so  definitely  distinguished  from  the  natural 
order  of  things.  Human  intelligence  had  not  yet  distinguished 
scientific  determinism  and  supernaturalism.  A  natural  phe- 
nomenon !  The  bare  idea  is  almost  modern  ;  that  is  to  say,  the 
idea  of  a  phenomenon  subject  to  immutable  laws,  bound  up 
together  with  the  whole  body  of  other  phenomena  and  form- 
ing with   them  a  single  unit.     What  a  complex   conception, 


88        G£X£S/S   OF  RELIGIONS  IX  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

and  how  far  above  the  reach  of  primitive  intelligence  !  'What 
we  call  a  miracle  is  a  natural  phenomenon  to  a  savage,  he  sees 
miracles  every  hour  ;  properly  speaking,  he  sees  nothing  else 
but  miracles,  that  is  to  say,  surprising  events.  Primitive  man,  in 
effect,  takes  no  notice  of  what  does  not  surprise  him  (surprise, 
it  has  been  said,  is  the  father  of  science),  and  one  of  the  imme- 
diate characteristics,  in  his  opinion,  of  what  surprises  him,  is 
that  it  is  intentional.'  That  it  should  be  so  no  more  shocks 
him,  than  a  paradox  shocks  a  philosopher.  The  savage  is 
not  acquainted  with  the  laws  of  nature,  he  has  no  notion  of 
their  being  universal  to  prevent  his  admitting  exceptions  to 
them.  A  miracle  is  simply  to  him  a  sign  of  a  power  like  his 
own,  acting  by  methods  unknown  to  him  and  producing  effects 
above  the  limits  of  his  own  capacity. ',  Are  such  effects  infinitely 
above  his  capacity  ?  No  such  notion  enters  into  the  question  ; 
it  suffices  that  they  be  above  it  at  all  to  make  him  bow  down 
and  adore. 

The  belief  in  miracles,    so  anti-scientific  nowadays,    marks 
a    considerable    progress    in    the    intellectual    evolution.     It 
amounts,    in    effect,    to   a    limitation    of   divine 
of  intellectual        intervention  to  a  small  number  of  extraordinary 
progress.  phenomena.     A  conception    of   universal    deter- 

minism is,  in  fact,  beginning  to  make  its  appearance.  The 
belief  in  dualism,  in  the  separation  between  spirit  and 
body,  becoming  constantly  more  marked,  ends  in  the  belief 
in  distinct  and  separate  powers. 

Belief  in  a  power  miraculously  distributing  good  and  evil, 

in    a     Providence,  is    the    most    vital    element    in    religion. 

ConceptioBof      The    most    important   act  in  every    religion,   in- 

God  as  Providence  deed,  is  propitiation  and  entreaty;  well,  this  act 

more  essential  .  -ii'^ji  j/-^j  ii^j. 

than  that  of  Him  IS  not  Simply  directed  toward  God  as  such,  but 
as  First  Cause.  toward  God  as  a  presiding  divinity,  a  power 
capable  of  favouring  or  disfavouring  us.  And  the  great 
Oriental    religions  have  reached    their  present  state    of    per- 

'  Etymologically,  miracle  signifies  simply  surprising.  The  Hindus  do  not  even 
possess  a  special  word  for  a  supernatural  event  ;  miracle  and  spectacle  in  their 
language  are  one.  The  supernatural,  that  is  to  say,  is  for  them  simply  an  object  of 
contemplation  and  admiration,  an  event  which  stands  out  prominently  from  the 
general  monotony  which  attracts  the  eye. 


RELIGIOUS  METAPHYSICS.  ^      89 

fection    without    any  special    effort    to  make    the  notion    of 
God  precise,  without  specially  insisting  upon  any  of  his  distin- 
guishing   attributes    except    such    as    are    subsidiary    to    this 
notion  of  a  Providence  awarding  good  and  evil ;  and  popular 
fancy  hastens   to   ascribe   the   accomplishment   of  this   distri- 
bution   to    genii,  to    good    and    evil    spirits;    it    need   go    no 
further,  it    need    not    penetrate    to    the    Great  Being,  to  the 
infinite,  so  to  speak,  to  the  noumenon,  and  to  the  abyss  which, 
in  effect,  is  to  it  a  comparative  matter  of  indifference.     Even 
in   religions  of  Christian  origin — in  especial,   in  Catholicism, 
and  the  Greek  Church — God  is  not  always  addressed  directly  ; 
saints,  angels,  the  Virgin,  the  Son,  the  Holy  Spirit,  are  much 
more  frequently  invoked  as  mediators.     There  is  something 
vague,  and  obscure,  and  terrible,  in  God  the  Father  ;  He  is  the    '^> 
creator  of  heaven  and  hell,  the  great   and  somewhat  ambigu- 
ous principle  of  goodness,  and,  in  some  dim  way,  of  evil.     One 
may  see  in   Him  the   germ   of  an  indirect  personification  of 
nature,  which  is  so  indifferent  to  man,  so  hard,  so  inflexible. 
Christ,  on   the  contrary,  is  the  personification  of   the  best  ele- 
ments of  humanity.     The    responsibility    for   ferocious   laws, 
maledictions,  eternal  punishments,  is  laid  upon  the  shoulders 
of  the  Old  Testament  Deity  hidden  behind  His  cloud,  revealed 
only  in  the  lightning  and  the  thunder,  reigning  by  terror,  and 
demanding  the  life  even  of  His  Son  as  an  expiatory  sacrifice. 
At  bottom,  the  real  God  adored  by  the  Christians  is  Jesus, 
that  is  to  say,  a  mediating  Providence  whose  function  is  to 
soften  down  the  asperities  of  natural   law,  a   Providence  who 
distributes  nothing  but  good  and  happiness,  whereas  nature 
distributes  good  and  evil  with  equal  indifference.     It  is  Jesus 
we  invoke,  and  it  is  to  the  personification  of  Providence  rather 
than  to  that  of  the  first  cause  of  the  world  that  humanity  has 
kneeled  these  two  thousand  years. 

A  belief  in  miracles  and  in  a  Providence  comes,  in  the  course 
of  its  development,  into  sharper  and  sharper  conflict  with  a 
belief  in  the  order  of  nature.  Man  gives  himself  up  to  an 
exclusive  preoccupation  with  what  he  supposes  to  be  the  means 
of  ameliorating  his  destiny  and  that  of  his  fellows:  providen- 
tial interference  with  the  course  of  nature,  sacrifice,  and  prayer 


90        GENESIS  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE   SOCIETIES. 

are   his  great  means    of  action  on   the    world.      He    lives  in 

the  supernatural.     There  exists  always,  in  the  early  stages  of 

every    religion,  a    certain    sentiment    of    evil,   of 
Increasing  oppo-         „      .  •       ,       ,     ,- 

sition between        suttermg,  ot  terror;  and  to  correct  it  the  believer 

notion  of  Provi-  takes  refuge  in  miracles.  Providence  is  thus  the 
denoe  and  science.         ... 

primitive  means  of  progress,  and  man's  first  hope 

lay  in  the  superhuman. 

Fear  of  evil,  and  belief  that  it  can  be  cured  by  divine  inter- 
vention, were  the  origin  of  prayer.     A  positive  religion,  even 

_    ,.   ,     .,  .  in   our  days,  can   scarcely  rest   content  with   the 
Practical  evil  of  .     -^  ■' 

ijeiief  in  Provi-  Conception  of  a  God  who  simply  sits  at  a  dis- 
^^^'^'^'  tance  and   watches  the  march  of  a  worKl    which 

he  regulated,  once  for  all,  at  the  beginning  of  time.  He 
must  absolutely  show  himself  from  time  to  time  in  our 
midst,  we  must  feel  the  proximity  of  his  hand  ready  to 
sustain  us,  he  must  be  able  to  suspend  the  course  of  nature 
to  our  profit.  Piety  requires  the  stimulus  of  a  belief  in  the 
immediate  and  present  possibility  of  miracles,  in  their  past 
existence,  in  their  present  existence  even,  and  in  one's  power 
of  invoking  them  by  prayer.  Thus  the  believer  opposes  to  the 
conception  of  ordinary  determinism,  as  the  regulating  prin- 
ciple of  the  external  world,  a  faith  in  a  being  capable  at  any 
moment  of  tampering  with  it ;  and  he  counts  upon  this 
power  being  exercised,  he  counts  upon  invoking  it,  he  puts 
his  hope  in  supernatural  means  not  less  than  in  natural  means, 
and  sometimes  even  to  the  neglect  of  the  latter. 


-fc>' 


As  Littre  remarked,  the  mind  may  behave  in  three  ways  in 
regard  to  miracles  :  adore  them,  reject  them  as  a  mystifica- 
tion, or  explain  them  by  natural  means.  Primi- 
fraTds^°^^'  ''°*  tive  times.  Antiquity,  and  the  Middle  Ages  adored 
miracles;  the  eighteenth  century  rejected  them 
as  impostures  and  made  game  of  them.  It  was  then  that  the 
theory,  that  the  founders  of  religion  were  impostors  simply, 
was  generally  prevalent.  One  of  the  most  necessary  and  most 
serious  incidents  in  the  human  drama  was  simply  mistaken 
for  a  bit  of  comedy.  It  was  forgotten  that  men  do  not  devote 
a  whole  lifetime  to  falsehood  ;  the  theory  of  imposture  was  a 


V*  OP     T 

UNIVEjrisiTY  j) 
RELIGIOUS  META PHYSIO^     ,.. 9 1 

psychological  as  well  as  historical  error.  A  man — even  an 
actor  or  a  politician — is  always  sincere  on  some  side  or  other; 
at  some  period  or  other  a  man  inevitably  says  what  he  thinks, 
even  if  only  by  mistake.  Even  certain  palinodes,  provoked 
by  self-interest,  are  explicable  by  an  unconscious  deviation, 
under  the  influence  of  some  passion,  rather  than  by  an 
altogether  conscious  and  brazen  determination  to  deceive  ; 
and  even  when  one  lies  with  all  one's  heart,  one  inevitably 
believes,  or  soon  comes  to  believe,  some  part  of  one's  own 
falsehood.  The  reproach  of  hypocrisy,  of  comedy  and  false- 
hood, has  been  uttered  a  hundred  times  in  the  course  of  his- 
tory, and  it  has  usually  been  a  mistake.  In  the  eighteenth 
century  the  same  men  who  prepared  and  achieved  the  French 
Revolution  were  fond  of  accusing  the  prophets  and  Apostles, 
the  revolutionists  of  an  early  date,  of  insincerity  and  fraud. 
To-day  such  an  accusation  can  no  longer  be  sustained  against 
the  sacred  books,  and  the  men  of  the  eighteenth  century  are 
themselves  accused  of  hypocrisy.  For  M.  Taine,  for 
example,  almost  all  the  leaders  of  the  French  Revolution  lie 
under  the  reproach  of  insincerity,  and  the  very  people  who 
sustained  them  were  not,  in  his  judgment,  moved  by  the 
ideas  which  they  proclaimed,  but  by  the  grossest  self-interest. 
The  fact  is,  there  are  always  two  points  of  view  from  which 
historic  events  may  be  regarded  :  that  of  personal  inter- 
ests, which  come  to  the  surface  as  seldom  as  possible,  and 
that  of  the  general  and  generous  ideas  which,  on  the  contrary, 
are  complacently  given  prominence  in  public  speeches  and 
writings.  If  it  is  useful  for  the  historian  to  divine  the  inter- 
ested  motives  which  contributed  to  the  production  of  a  his- 
torical event,  it  is  irrational  to  refuse  to  lend  some  measure  of 
credence  to  the  higher  motives  which  justified  it  and  which 
may  well  have  lent  their  influence  to  that  of  self-interest. 
The  human  heart  is  not  a  one-stringed  instrument.  The 
.revolutionists  had  faith  in  the  Revolution,  in  the  rights  which 
they  were  vindicating,  in  equality  and  fraternity  ;  they  even 
believed,  sometimes,  in  their  own  disinterestedness,  as  the 
Protestants  believed  in  the  Reformation,  as  Christ  and  the 
prophets   believed  in  their  own   inspiration  ;    as   even  in   our 


9*        GEXESIS   OF  RELIGIONS  IX  PRIMITIVE   SOCIETIES. 

days,  by  a  belated  superstition,  the  Pope  believes  in  his  own 
infallibility.  There  is  in  every  faith  some  element  of  the 
naivete  which  a  child  shows  in  its  little  semi-conscious  hypoc- 
risies, in  its  caresses  which  mask  a  demand  and  its  smiles 
which  are  the  efflorescence  of  satisfied  desire.  But  without  a 
certain  element  of  genuineness,  a  certain  element  of  real  naivet6 
in  the  faith  of  the  believers,  no  religion  could  exist,  no  revolu- 
tion would  be  achieved,  no  important  change  would  be  pro- 
duced in  the  life  of  humanity.  Intellectual  affirmation  and 
action  are  always  proportionate :  to  act  is  to  believe  and  to 
believe  is  to  act. 

In  our  days,  miracles  are  beginning  to  be  scientifically 
explained.  They  are  phenomena  simply;  frequently  they 
But  illusions,  '^^'ei'^  witnessed  and  described  in  good  faith,  but 
with  insufificient  knowledge.  Everyone  is  ac- 
quainted, for  example,  with  the  biblical  miracle  according 
to  which  Isaiah  "  brought  again  the  shadows  of  the  degrees, 
which  was  gone  down  in  the  sun  dial  of  Ahaz,  ten  degrees 
backward ";  indeed  the  miracle  has  been  reproduced.  '  Mr. 
Guillemin  '  demonstrates  by  geometrical  reasonings  that,  by 
inclining  the  dial  slightly  toward  the  horizon,  the  shadow 
may  be  made  gradually  to  creep  a  certain  distance  backward. 
In  the  same  way,  the  successive  appearances  of  Jesus  after 
his  burial  have  been  paralleled  by  a  recent  event  in  the 
United  States  :  a  criminal,  at  whose  execution  all  his  fellow- 
prisoners  were  present,  appeared  to  all  of  them  successively 
the  next  day,  or  the  day  after.  The  latter  is  a  remark- 
able instance  of  collective  hallucination,  which  shows  that  a 
group  of  individuals  living  in,  so  to  speak,  the  same  emotional 
habitat  may  well  be  struck  at  the  same  time  by  the  same 
vision,  without  there  being,  on  their  part,  either  conscious  or 
unconscious  fraud  or  collusion.  A  third  miracle,  of  an  alto- 
gether different  kind,  has  also  been  scientifically  explained  :  I 
mean  the  colouring  of  the  fleece  of  the  flocks  of  Laban  and  of 
Jacob  ;  the  effect  was  obtained  by  a  process  well-known  to  the 
Egyptians,  and  mentioned  by  Pliny.  Matthew  Arnold  believes 
that  the  miraculous  cures  also  are   not  pure  legend   simply, 

'  Actes  de  la  Societe  helvet.  des  sc.  nat.,  August,  1877. 


RELIGIOUS  METAPHYSICS.  93 

that  they  bear  witness  to  the  great  influence  of  mind  over 
matter.  Jesus  really  did  exorcise  devils,  that  is  to  say,  the 
mad  passions  which  howled  about  him.  And  thus  may  be 
understood  in  their  true  sense  the  words :  "  What  does  it  matter 
whether  I  say,  Thy  sins  are  forgiven  thee  !  or  whether  I  say 
Arise  and  walk?"  and  again :  "  Thou  art  made  whole;  sin  no 
more,  lest  a  worse  thing  befall  thee."  Jesus  himself  must 
have  known,  as  Socrates  and  Empedocles  did,  though  even  in 
a  more  extraordinary  degree,  that  he  possessed  a  moral  and 
physical  power,  a  virtue,  which  he  himself  did  not  understand 
and  which  seemed  to  him  a  divine  gift.  He  knew  himself  to 
be  morally  and  symbolically  the  healer  of  the  deaf,  the  blind, 
the  paralytic,  a  physician  of  souls  ;  and  the  cures  that  he 
wrought  in  cases  of  hysteria,  more  or  less  temporary  but  real, 
forced  him  to  attribute  to  himself  a  superhuman  power  over 
the  body  also. 

The  science    of   the    nervous   system,  which    dates   almost 

entirely  from  our  days,  may  be  taken  as  a  perpetual  running 

commentary  on  the  history  of  miracles.     Perhaps 

Usually  expli-  ^    , ,  .      ,  1 1  r  1 

cable  by  the  ^  lull  quarter  of  the  marvellous  facts  observed 
science  of  ner-        ^nd  revered  by  humanity  fall  into  place  within 

vons  phenomena.        ,  .  e     ^  • 

the  hmits  of  this  new  science.  A  physician,  or 
observer,  in  the  midst  of  his  subjects  is  like  a  prophet  ;  those 
who  surround  him  are  incessantly  obliged  to  recognize  in  him 
an  occult  power,  which  he  himself  does  not  understand ; 
physician  and  patient,  observer  and  observed,  live  equally  in 
the  realm  of  the  extraordinary.  The  facts  of  partial  insensi- 
bility, of  catalepsy  followed  by  a  reawakening  like  a  rising 
from  the  dead,  of  mental  suggestion  taking  place  even  at  a 
distance,  all  these  facts,  which  are  well  known,  and  are  each 
day  becoming  more  and  more  explicable,  are  even  for  us  at 
the  present  moment  on  the  confines  of  the  miraculous  ;  they 
are  detaching  themselves,  under  our  very  eyes,  from  the 
sphere  of  religion,  and  falling  within  the  compass  of  science. 
The  observer  who  notices  for  the  lirst  time  that  he  can  trans- 
mit an  almost  compulsive  command  by  a  look,  by  a  pressure 
of  the  hand,  and  even,  it  appears  nowadays,  by  a  simple  ten- 
sion of  his  will,  must  experience  a  species  of  surprise,  even  of 


94        GENESIS   OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

fright,  of  almost  religious  disquietude  at  finding  himself  armed 
with  such  a  power.  He  must  begin  to  understand  that  the 
mythical  and  mystical  interpretation  of  such  facts  is  an  affair 
of  delicate  discrimination,  that  lay  beyond  the  stretch  of 
primitive  intelligence. 

Even  the  miracles  which  do  not  belong  simply  to  the  less 
explicable  phenomena  of   the    nervous  system    tend    increas- 
_.     ,    ,  ingly  to  appear  to  the  historian  as  havjng  been 

recondite knowl-    possessed  of  some  foundation  in  fact.     All  that' 
*'^®'  was   subjective    in    them    is   the  element  of   the 

marvellous  and  the  providential.  The  miracles  really  were 
produced,  but  in  the  human  heart  ;^jand  instead,  in  any 
proper  sense,  of  engendering  faith  they  proceeded  from  it 
and  are  explicable  by  it.  An  English  missionary  '  who 
made  a  journey  in  Siberia  relates  that  at  the  moment  of 
his  arrival  at  Irkutsk  a  fire  was  consuming  three-fourths 
of  the  town ;  a  chapel,  however,  had  been  spared  and 
the  Russian  clergy  saw  in  this  fact  a  miracle;  the  English 
missionary  explained  it  very  simply  by  the  observation 
that  the  rest  of  the  town  had  been  built  up  of  wood,  and 
that  the  chapel  was  of  brick.  But  the  missionary,  who 
denies  anything  like  providential  intervention  in  the  above 
mentioned  case,  admits  providential  intervention  the  same 
day  in  regard  to  another  point ;  for  he  relates  that  but  for 
one  of  his  horses  having  run  away  he  would  have  arrived 
too  soon  at  Irkutsk,  and  would  have  had  his  baggage  burned 
in  the  fire,  and  offers  thanks  to  God  because  his  horse  had 
been  inspired  to  break  the  traces.  The  same  natural  causes 
which  suffice,  according  to  this  excellent  gentleman,  to 
explain  why  the  Russian  church  was  spared,  suffice  no  longer 
when  the  luggage  of  an  Anglican  missionary,  the  special 
prote'gi^,  is  involved.  Every  believer  is  inclined  thus  to  inter- 
pret miraculously  the  mercies  that  have  been  shown  to  him. 
From  the  height  of  a  stall  or  the  pulpit  of  a  church  one  sees 
the  events  of  this  world  at  a  particular  angle  ;  from  the  stall 
or  pulpit  of  another  church  one  sees  them  at  another  angle, 

'  Through  Siberia,  by  Henry  Lansdell,  with  illustrations  and  maps  ;  London, 
1882. 


RELIGIOUS  METAPHYSICS.  95 

and  for  purposes  of  scientific  verity  the  events  must  be 
looked  down  upon  from  the  stalls  and  pulpits  of  every  church 
—  unless  one  rejects  churches  altogether. 

Religions  create  miracles  by  the  very  need  that  they  them- 

y    selves  feel  for  them,  they  create  them  as  evidence  in  their  own 

support;    miracles  enter  as  a  necessary  element 

Miracles  essen-    j^^^^  ^j^^  process  of  mental  evolution  which  engen- 
tial  to  religion,  ^  ° 

ders  religion.     The  distinguishing    mark    of   the 

word  of  God  is  that  it  alters  the  order  of  natural  phenomena. 

Mohammedanism  alone   made  its  way  in   the   world   without 

the  assistance  of    visible    and    gross   evidence    in    its    favour, 

appealing  not  to  the  eyes  but  to  the  spirit,  as  Pascal  would 

say;  and  in  this  respect  it  may  perhaps  claim  an  intellectual 

elevation    that    Judaism    and    Christianity   cannot.       But    if 

Mohammed  refused  tne  gift  of  miracles,  with    a    good  faith 

that  Moses  seems  not  to  havx2  possessed,  his  disciples  hastened 

to   force  it  upon   him,  and  have  supplied  his  life  and  death 

with   an   appropriate   setting  of   marvellous   legend.     Ground 

of  belief  must  be  had  ;  the  messtnger  of  God  must  present 

some  visible  sign  by  which  he  may  be  recognized. 

It  is  evident  that  divine  providence  or  protection  must  have 

been  conceived  in  the  beginning  as  quite  special,  and   not   as 

acting  by  general  laws.     The  course  of  the  world 

Prevalence  of 

belief  in  special      was  one  continual  series  of  divine  interventions 
providence.  j,^  ^j-^g  natural  order  of  things,  and  in  the  affairs  of 

men  ;  divinities  lived  in  the  midst  of  mankind,  in  the  midst  of 
the  family,  in  the  midst  of  the  tribe.  This  result  may  be 
explained  as  due  to  the  very  character  of  primitive  humanity. 
Primitive  man,  who  is  the  most  credulous,  is  evidently  also  the 
least  responsible  of  mankind;  incapable  of  governing  himself, 
he  is  always  willing  to  abandon  himself  to  the  management  of 
somebody  else  ;  in  every  circumstance  of  life  he  needs  to  share 
some  part  of  his  burden.  If  a  misfortune  happens  to  him,  he 
•  relies  on  anybody  or  anything  rather  than  on  himself.  This 
characteristic,  w^hich  has  been  remarked  in  a  number  of  races 
of  mankind,  is  especially  visible  in  infants  and  in  infant 
peoples.  They  lack  patience  to  follow  without  skipping  a 
link  in  the  chain  of  cause  and  effect ;  they  do  not  understand 


9<5        GEXESIS  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE   SOCIETIES. 

how  any  human  action  can  produce  any  great  effect,  and 
are,  in  general,  much  astonished  at  the  disproportion  which 
exists  between  effects  and  their  causes — a  disproportion 
which  is  only  explicable  in  their  eyes  by  the  intervention  of 
some  foreign  cause.  Hence  the  need,  so  remarkable  in  feeble 
minds,  to  discover  some  other  than  the  real  explanation  for  a 
phenomenon  ;  the  real  explanation  is  never,  in  their  eyes, 
truly  sufficient.  For  a  vanquished  soldier,  the  defeat  is  never 
sufficiently  explained  by  scientific  grounds  ;  for  example,  by  his' 
own  cowardice,  by  the  ill-management  of  the  men  on  the  field, 
by  the  ignorance  of  the  leaders ;  before  the  explanation  is 
complete  the  notion  of  treason  must  always  be  added.  Just 
so,  if  one  of  the  lower  classes  has  an  attack  of  indigestion,  he 
will  not  admit  that  he  has  eaten  too  much  ;  he  will  complain 
of  the  quality  of  the  food,  and  perhaps  even  suggest  that 
somebody  has  tried  to  poison  him.  In  the  Middle  Ages,  when 
there  was  pestilence,  it  was  the  fault  of  the  Jews  ;  at  Naples 
the  people  beat  the  images  of  the  saints  when  the  harvest  is 
not  good.  All  these  facts  are  explicable  in  the  same  way;  an 
uncultivated  mind  cannot  bring  itself  to  accept  a  result  which 
is  disagreeable  to  it,  cannot  resign  itself  to  having  been  unex- 
pectedly disconcerted  by  the  mere  brute  course  of  things,  to 
say  with  Turenne,  when  he  was  asked  how  he  lost  a  battle : 
"  By  my  own  fault."  The  notion  of  a  special  providence 
allies  itself  with  his  natural  disposition  ;  it  permits  man  to 
wash  his  hands  of  all  responsibility,  no  matter  what  happens. 
A  result  which  it  would  be  too  much  trouble  to  foresee,  and 
to  obtain  by  mere  natural  means,  can  always  be  demanded  at 
the  hand  of  Providence  ;  one  waits  for  it  instead  of  working 
for  it ;  and  if  one  is  deceived  in  one's  expectations  one  lays  the 
blame  on  the  Deity.  In  the  Bible,  kings  are  never  guilty 
except  toward  God,  their  incapacity  is  simply  impiety  ;  but  it 
is  always  easier  to  be  pious  than  to  be  capable. 

At  the  same  time  that  the  naive  irresponsibility  of  primitive 
people  thus  accommodates  itself  to  the  providential  govern- 
ment of  the  world,  it  accommodates  itself  no  less  to  the  des- 
potic government  of  a  monarch  or  of  an  aristocracy.  The 
principle  of  despotism  is  at  bottom   identical  with   that  of  a 


RELIGIOUS  METAPHYSICS.  97 

supernatural,  external  providence ;  the  latter  also  demands  a 
certain  renunciation  or  abdication  in  the  direction  of  events. 
One  lets  one's  self  go,  one  confides  one's  self  to 
dence  umeJ"'"'''  someone  else,  and  by  this  means  one  winks  at  the 
people  for  abso-      cruellest  of  frauds,  the  defraudment  of  one's  own 

lute  monarchy,  ,.   .  ,  ...  11^  •  •  ' 

volition  ;  another  wills  and  determines  in  one  s 
stead.  One  limits  one's  self  to  desiring  and  hoping,  and  prayers 
and  supplications  take  the  place  of  action  and  of  work.  One 
floats  with  the  stream  in  a  state  of  relaxation  ;  if  things  turn 
ill  there  is  always  someone  for  one  to  blame,  to  curse,  or  to 
wheedle  ;  if,  on  the  contrary,  things  turn  out  well,  one's  heart 
overflows  with  benedictions,  not  to  mention  that  one  secretly 
attributes  some  part  (man  is  so  made)  of  the  result  obtained  to 
one's  self.  Instead  of  saying,  "  I  determined  that  it  should  be 
so,"  one  says,  "  I  asked,  I  prayed  for  it."  It  is  so  easy  to 
believe  that  one  is  helping  to  manage  the  state,  or  govern  the 
earth,  when  one  has  murmured  two  words  into  the  ear  of  a 
king  or  a  god— when,  like  the  fly  in  the  fable,  one  has  simply 
buzzed  an  instant  about  the  great  rolling  wheel  of  the  world. 
Propitiatory  prayer  possesses  a  power  which  is  great  in  propor- 
tion to  its  vagueness  ;  it  seems  to  be  able  to  do  everything 
precisely  because  it  cannot  ever  do  anything  in  especial.  It 
exalts  man  in  his  own  eyes  because  it  enables  him  to  obtain 
the  maximum  of  effect  with  the  minimum  of  effort.  What 
a  penchant  the  people  have  always  felt  for  destiny  and 
men  of  destiny!  How  every  appeal  to  the  people,  in 
behalf  of  men  of  destiny,  has  in  all  times  succeeded  in 
taking  the  suffrage  of  the  masses  !  A  sentiment  of  sub- 
mission to  the  decrees  of  Providence,  who  is  destiny  per- 
sonified, has  been  the  excuse  of  every  form  of  indolence, 
of  every  cowardly  adherence  to  custom.  And  if  one  car- 
ries it  to  its  logical  conclusion,  to  what  else  does  the  indo- 
"lent  sophism  of  the  Orientals  amount  ?  It  is  true  that  the 
precept,  "  Heaven  will  aid  thee,"  is  habitually  corrected  by 
the  precept,  "  Aid  thyself."  But  efficiency  to  aid  one's  self 
demands  initiative,  and  audacity,  and  a  spirit  of  revolt  against 
an  unwelcome  course  of  things  ;  efficiently  to  aid  one's  self  one 
must  not  say,  "  God's  will  be  done,"  but  "  My  will  be  done  "; 


98        GEXES/S  OF  MEL/G/O.VS  LV  PRIMITIVE   SOCIETIES. 

one  must  be  a  rebel  in  the  midst  of  the  passive  multitude,  a 
sort  of  Prometheus  or  Satan.  It  is  difificult  to  say  to  one, 
"  Whatever  happens,  whatever  exists,  is  what  it  is,  by  the  irre- 
sistible and  special  will  of  God,"  and  nevertheless  to  add, 
"  Do  not  submit  to  the  accomplished  facts."  In  the  Middle 
Ages  men  consoled  themselves  in  the  midst  of  tyranny  and 
poverty  by  thinking  that  it  was  God  himself  who  was  oppress- 
ing them,  and  dared  not  rise  against  their  masters  for  fear 
they  might  be  rising  really  against  God.  To  preserve  social 
injustice  it  had  to  be  apotheosized.  What  was  really  no  more 
than  a  human  right  had  to  be  made  divine. 

The  sentiment  of  personal  initiative,  like  that  of  personal 
responsibility,  is  quite  modern  and  incapable  of  being  devel- 

B        1 .  ...      oped  in  the  atmosphere  of  bigotry  and  narrow- 
Personal  initia-       ^  ^  to       J 

tive  a  defiance  of    ness  in  which  man  has  long  lived  with  his  gods, 
ego  s.  -p^  g^y  ^Q  one's  self,  "  I  can  undertake  something 

new  ;  I  shall  have  the  audacity  to  introduce  a  change  into  the 
world;  to  make  an  advance  ;  in  the  combat  against  brute  nature 
I  shall  shoot  the  first  arrow,  without  waiting,  like  the  soldier 
of  antiquity,  till  the  auspices  have  been  consulted  " — would 
have  looked  like  an  enormity  to  men  of  former  times;  to 
men  who  did  not  take  a  step  without  consulting  their  gods 
and  carrying  their  images  before  them  to  show  the  way. 
Personal  initiative  was,  on  the  face  of  it,  a  direct  offence 
against  Providence,  an  encroachment  on  His  rights  ;  to  strike 
the  rock  as  Moses  did,  before  having  received  the  order  to 
do  so  from  God,  would  have  been  to  expose  one's  self  to  His 
wrath.  The  world  was  the  private  property  of  the  Most  High. 
It  was  not  permitted  to  a  man  to  employ  the  forces  of  nature 
without  special  leave  ;  man  was  in  the  position  of  a  child,  who 
is  not  allowed  to  play  with  the  fire  ;  except  that  the  reason 
for  prohibiting  the  child  is  not  the  same — we  do  not  prohibit 
children  from  playing  with  the  fire  because  we  are  "jealous" 
of  them.  The  jealousy  of  the  gods  is  a  conception  which  has 
survived  till  the  present  day,  although  it  is  incessantly  retreat- 
ing before  the  progress  made  by  human  initiative.  Machinery, 
the  product  of  modern  times,  is  the  most  powerful  enemy  that 
the  notion  of  a  Providence  has  ever  had  to  wrestle  with.     One 


RELIGIOUS  METAPHYSICS.  99 

knows  how  the  innocent  winnowing  machine  was  cursed  by 
the  priests,  and  looked  upon  with  an  eye  of  hatred  by  the 
peasants,  because  it  imprisoned  and  employed  in  the  service  of 
man  an  essentially  providential  force — that  of  the  wind.  But 
malediction  was  useless,  the  wind  could  not  refuse  to  winnow 
the  wheat  ;  the  machine  vanquished  the  gods.  There,  as 
everywhere,  human  initiative  carried  the  day.  Science  found 
itself  in  direct  opposition  to  the  special  intervention  of  Provi- 
dence, and  appropriated  and  subdued  the  forces  of  nature  to 
an  end,  in  appearance,  not  divine  but  natural.  A  man  of 
science  is  a  disturbing  element  in  nature,  and  science  an  anti- 
providence. 

Before    the    earliest    developments    of     science,    primitive 

man  found  himself,  as   a  result  of   his  imagination,  in  a  state 

of    domesticity    in   the  world,  analogous  to  that 

Man  practically  i   •    i         ,  i       i      i   •  i  r  i  i  .l    • 

a  domestic  animal   to     which      he     had     hunseli     reduced     certam 

in  the  house  of      animals  ;  and  this  state   exerted  a   profound    in- 

the  gods :  result-  . 

ing  enfeeblement    fiuence    upon    the    character    of     such     anmials, 

of  character.  deprived  them  of  certain  capacities  and  endowed 

them,  in  turn,  with  others.  Some  of  them — certain  birds,  for 
example — -become  under  domestication  almost  incapable  of 
finding  and  providing  themselves  with  their  necessary  food. 
More  intelligent  animals  like  the  dog,  who  might  in  a  case 
of  absolute  necessity  rely  upon  himself  for  indispensables,  con- 
tract nevertheless  a  habit  of  subjection  to  man  which  creates 
a  corresponding  need  :  my  dog  is  not  at  ease  except  when  he 
knows  that  I  am  near  ;  if  anything  causes  me  to  go  away,  he 
is  restless  and  nervous  ;  in  the  presence  of  danger  he  runs 
between  my  legs,  instead  of  taking  refuge  in  flight,  which 
would  be  the  primitive  instinct.  Thus  every  animal  which 
knows  itself  to  be  watched  and  protected  in  the  details  of  its 
life  by  a  superior  being,  necessarily  loses  its  primitive  inde- 
pendence, and  if  its  primitive  independence  should  be  once 
more  restored,  it  would  be  unhappy,  would  experience  an 
ill-defined  fear,  a  vague  sentiment  of  enfeeblement.  Just  so 
in  the  case  of  primitive  and  uncultivated  man  :  once  he  is 
habituated  to  the  protection  of  the  gods,  this  protection 
becomes  for  him  a  veritable  need  ;  if  he  is  deprived  of  it,  he 


lOO      GENESIS  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE    S0CIE7VES. 

falls  into  a  state  of  inexpressible  discomfiture  and  inquietude. 
Add  tiiat,  in  this  case,  he  will  soon  provide  himself  with  a 
substitute ;  to  escape  from  the  intolerable  solitude  which 
doubt  creates  within  him,  he  will  take  refuge  in  his  gods  or  his 
fetiches,  under  the  influence  of  a  sentiment  identical  with 
that  which  sends  the  dog  to  take  refuge  between  the  legs  of 
his  master.  To  attain  some  idea  of  the  force  of  such  a  senti- 
ment among  primitive  human  beings,  one  must  remember 
that  the  surveillance  of  the  gods  is  much  more  extended  and' 
more  scrupulous  even  than  that  of  man  over  domestic  ani- 
mals, or  of  a  master  over  his  slaves.  Primitive  man  feels  his 
god  or  his  genii  at  his  side  at  every  step,  in  all  the  circum- 
stances of  life  ;  he  is  accustomed  to  being  never  alone,  to  the 
presence  of  someone  by  him  keeping  step  with  him  ;  he 
believes  that  every  word  that  he  says  and  every  act  that  he 
does  is  witnessed  and  judged.  No  domestic  animal  is  accus- 
tomed to  so  high  a  degree  of  subjection  ;  he  knows  perfectly 
that  our  protection  is  not  always  efficacious  and  that  we  are 
sometimes  mistaken  about  him,  that  we  caress  him  when  he 
ought  to  be  punished,  etc.  Cats,  for  instance,  know  that  man 
cannot  see  in  the  dark  :  one  evening  a  white  cat  made  ready 
to  commit  an  abominable  misdemeanour  within  two  steps  of 
me,  not  suspecting  that  its  colour  would  betray  it  to  an  attent- 
ive eye,  even  in  the  obscurity.  Primitive  men  sometimes 
practised  an  analogous  cunning  in  regard  to  their  gods;  they 
did  not  yet  believe  in  the  complete  sovereignty,  in  the  abso- 
lute ubiquity,  of  Providence.  But  by  a  process  of  logical 
development,  Providence  is  ultimately  believed  to  extend  to 
everything,  to  envelop  one's  whole  life  ;  the  fear  of  God 
becomes  to  man  a  perpetual  prohibition  against  his  passions,  a 
hope  in  God's  aid  his  perpetual  recourse.  Religion  and 
science  possess  this  much  in  common,  that  they  result  in 
enveloping  us  equally  in  a  network  of  necessities;  but  what 
distinguishes  science  is  that  it  makes  us  acquainted  with  the 
real  order  and  causes  of  phenomena,  and  by  that  fact  permits 
us  to  modify  that  order  at  will ;  by  showing  us  the  fact  and 
nature  of  our  dependence,  science  supplies  us  with  the  means 
of  conquering  a  comparative  independence.     In  religion,  on  the 


RELIGIOUS  METAPHYSICS.  lOi 

contrary,  the  mythical  and  miraculous  element  introduces  an 
unforeseen  factor,  the  divine  will,  a  special  providence,  into  the 
midst  of  events,  and  by  that  fact  deceives  one  as  to  the  true 
means  of  modifying  the  real  course  of  things.  The  instant 
one  believes  one's  self  to  be  dependent  upon  Jupiter  or  Allah, 
one  ascribes  a  greater  efficacy  to  propitiation  than  to  action  ; 
and  it  follows  that  the  greater  one  perceives  one's  dependence 
to  be  the  more  completely  one  believes  one's  self  to  be  with- 
out defence  against  it ;  the  more  complete  the  submission  is  to 
God,  the  more  complete  one's  resulting  submission  becomes  to 
the  established  fact.  The  feeling  of  an  imaginary  dependence 
upon  supernatural  beings  thus  increases  the  general  depend- 
ence of  man  in  relation  to  nature.  Thus  understood,  the 
notion  of  a  special  providence,  of  a  divine  tutelage,  has 
resulted  in  the  protracted  maintenance  of  the  human  soul  in  a 
state  of  genuine  minority;  and  this  state  of  minority,  in  its 
turn,  has  rendered  the  existence  and  surveillance  of  divine  pro- 
tectors a  necessity.  When,  therefore,  the  believer  refuses  an 
offer  of  emancipation  from  the  dependence  which  he  has 
voluntarily  accepted,  the  reason  is  that  he  feels  a  vague  senti- 
ment of  his  own  insuf^ciency,  of  his  irremediably  belated 
coming  of  age ;  he  is  a  child,  who  does  not  dare  stray  far 
from  the  paternal  roof;  he  does  not  possess  the  courage  to 
walk  alone.  The  child  who  should  show  a  precocious  inde- 
pendence, and  should  early  learn  to  go  its  own  road,  would 
not  improbably  become  simply  dissipated  ;  his  precocity  might 
well  be  depravity  in  disguise.  Similarly  in  history,  the 
irreligious,  the  sceptics,  the  atheists,  have  been  frequently 
spoiled  children,  precocious  in  the  bad  sense  ;  their  freedom 
of  spirit  was  only  a  high  form  of  mischief.  The  human  race, 
like  the  individual,  long  needed  surveillance  and  tutelage;  so 
long  as  it  experienced  this  need  it  leaned  inevitably  upon  a 
belief  in  a  providence  external  to  itself  and  to  the  universe, 
capable  of  interfering  in  the  course  of  things,  and  of  modify- 
ing the  general  laws  of  nature  by  particular  acts  of  volition. 
Subsequently,  by  the  progress  of  science.  Providence  has  been 
deprived  day  by  day  of  some  of  its  special  and  miraculous 
powers,  of  its  supernatural  prerogatives.     By  the  evolution  of 


I02      GENESIS   or  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

human  thought  piety  has  been  transformed;  it  tends  to-day  to 
regard  as  an  object  of  fiHal  affection  what  was  formerly  an 
object  of  terror,  of  deprecation,  of  propitiation.  Science, 
enveloping  Providence  in  a  network  of  inflexible  laws,  is  day 
by  day  reducing  it  to  a  state  of  immobility  and,  so  to  speak, 
paralyzing  it.  Providence  is  becoming  like  an  old  man  whom 
age  has  rendered  incapable  of  movement — who  but  for  our  aid 
could  not  raise  a  hand  or  foot,  who  lives  with  our  assistance, 
and  who,  nevertheless,  is  only  the  more  beloved,  as  if  his' 
existence  became  to  us  more  precious  in  proportion  to  its 
uselessness. 

///.   Creation. 

After  the  notion  of  Providence  one  must  deal,  in  running 

through    the   metaphysical    principles   of   religion,   with    the 

notion  of  a  creator,  which  has  acquired  in  our 

Conception  of  .  ,  i      .     • ,      i  •  i  .  r 

creation  dual-        days  an  importance  that  it  did  not  possess  for- 

istic.  merly.     This    conception,    like    that  of  the  soul 

and  of  a  special  providence,  presented  itself  originally  under 
the  form  of  dualism.  Man  conceived  in  the  beginning  a  god 
as  fashioning  a  world  more  or  less  independent  of  himself,  out 
of  some  pre-existing  material.  It  was  only  later  that  this 
crude  dualism  was  refined  into  the  notion  of  creation  <f;ir  nihilo, 
which  represented  the  traditional  duality  as  produced  by 
a  primitive  unity — God,  who  had  at  first  existed  alone,  created 
out  of  nothing  a  world  distinct  and  separate  from  himself. 

The  following  conversation,  of  which  I  can  guarantee  the 
authenticity,   affords  an  example  of  naive  metaphysic.     The 
two  interlocutors  were  a  little  peasant  girl,  four 
ofcrertLn™  years  old,  who  had  always  lived  in  the  country, 

natural.  ^.^^  ^  young  girl  from  town,  the  daughter  of  the 

owner  of  the  farm.  They  had  gone  out  into  the  garden 
where  a  number  of  flowers  had  opened  that  morning;  the 
little  peasant  girl  admired  them  enthusiastically,  and  address- 
ing her  companion,  for  whom  she  had  long  entertained  a  spe- 
cies of  cult :  "  It  is  you,  mistress,  is  it  not,"  she  cried,  "  who 
makes  these  flowers?"  This  interrogation  did  not  embody 
an  incipient  speculation  in  a  sphere  of  physics;  the  child  sim- 


RELIGIOUS  METAPHYSICS.  103 

ply  attributed  an  unknown  power  to  a  visible  and  palpable 
being.  Her  mistress  replied  laughingly,  "  No,  not  I.  I 
haven't  the  power."  "Who  does  it  then?"  the  child  asked. 
One  perceives  the  persistence,  in  primitive  intelligences,  of  the 
impulse  to  explain  things  by  the  direct  action  of  somebody's 
volition,  the  impulse  to  place  somebody  behind  every  event. 
"It  is  God,"  replied  the  elder  girl.  "And  where  is  God? 
Have  you  ever  seen  Him  ?  "  No  doubt  the  little  peasant,  who 
regarded  the  city  as  a  very  surprising  place,  supposed  one 
might  meet  God  there,  face  to  face,  and  God  did  not,  as  yet, 
represent  to  her  anything  supra-physical.  But  how  admirably 
disposed  she  was  for  the  reception  of  a  more  or  less  illegiti- 
mate metaphysic  !  "  I  have  never  seen  God,"  replied  her  mis- 
tress, "and  nobody  has  ever  seen  Him.  He  lives  in  heaven, 
and  at  the  same  time  lives  among  us;  He  sees  us  and  hears 
us;  it  is  He  who  made  the  flowers,  who  made  you  and  me, 
and  everything  that  exists."  I  shall  not  report  the  child's  re- 
plies, for  I  believe  that  she  was  too  much  astonished  really  to 
say  anything.  She  was  in  a  situation  such  as  a  savage  finds 
himself  in  when  a  missionary  comes  and  talks  with  him  about 
God,  the  supreme  being,  creator  of  all  things,  a  spirit  existing 
without  a  body.  Savages  sometimes  refuse  to  understand, 
and  point  to  their  heads  and  declare  that  they  suffer ;  some- 
times they  believe  that  one  is  making  fun  of  them,  and  even 
among  our  children  there  is  a  good  deal  of  persistent  and 
mute  astonishment,  which  wears  off  slowly  with  the  lapse  of 
time.  What  is  striking  in  the  little  conversation  reported 
above,  is  the  way  in  which  the  metaphysical  myth  neces- 
sarily rises  out  of  the  scientific  error.  An  inexact  induction 
first  gives  rise  to  the  notion  of  a  human  being  acting  by  means 
to  us  unknown  and  mysterious;  this  notion,  once  obtained, 
fastens  upon  the  body  of  such  and  such  an  individual,  the  ob- 
ject antecedently  of  especial  veneration  ;  from  this  individual 
it  retreats  in  course  of  time  to  another  more  distant,  from 
country  to  town,  from  earth  to  heaven,  from  visible  heaven  to 
the  invisible  essence  of  things,  the  omnipresent  substratum  of 
the  world.  Simultaneously  with  this  retrograde  movement, 
the  being  endowed  with  marvellous  powers  becomes  increas- 


I04      GENESIS  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE   SOCIETIES. 

ingly  vague  and  abstract.  The  human  intelligence,  in  devel- 
oping its  conception  of  the  supernatural  being,  employs  what 
theologians  call  the  negative  niethod,  which  consists  in  ab- 
stracting one  known  attribute  after  another.  If  men  and 
races  of  men  have  always  followed  this  procedure,  it  is  less 
because  of  any  refinement  of  thought  on  their  part  than  in 
obedience  to  the  pressure  of  an  external  necessity.  Directly 
as  man  becomes  acquainted  with  nature,  he  sees  all  traces  of 
his  god  fly  before  him ;  he  is  like  a  miner  who,  thinking  that' 
he  recognizes  the  presence  of  gold  in  the  soil  beneath  his  feet, 
begins  to  dig,  and  finding  nothing,  cannot  make  up  his  mind 
to  believe  that  the  earth  contains  no  treasure  ;  he  sinks  his 
shafts  deeper  and  deeper  in  an  eternal  hopefulness.  Just  so,, 
instead  of  breaking  with  his  gods,  man  exiles  them  to  a  greater 
and  greater  distance  as  he  advances  in  knowledge.  What 
nature  excludes  tends  to  take  on  a  metaphysical  character ; 
every  error  which  persists  in  spite  of  the  progress  of  experi- 
ence takes  refuge  in  heaven,  in  some  sphere  more  and  more 
completely  inaccessible.  Thus  the  somewhat  gross  origins  of 
religions  are  not  irreconcilable  with  the  refined  speculations 
incident  to  their  period  of  development.  Human  intelligence, 
once  launched  into  infinite  space,  inevitably  describes  a  wider 
and  wider  orbit  about  reality.  A  mythical  religion  is  not  a 
completely  rational  and  rt'/r/crz  construction  ;  it  always  rests 
upon  alleged  experience,  upon  observations  and  analogies, 
which  are  tainted  with  error;  it  is,  therefore,  {tAs^  a  posteriori, 
and  therein  lies  the  explanation  of  the  invincible  and  increas- 
ing divergence  between  myth  and  verity. 

In  the  beginning  men  conceived  God  rather  as  an  orderer  of 

the  universe,  as  a  workman  fashioning  a  pre-existing  matter,  than 

„  ,         .    ,      as  a  creator  ;  we  find  this   notion   still  predomi- 

as  orderer  rather    nant   among  the  Greeks.     Its  genesis  was  prob- 

than  as  creator.  11  ,1  •  <-    n  wj\ 

ably  something  as  follows:     Whoever  supposes 

the  existence  of  God  regards  the  world  as  an  instrument  in 

His  hands;  God   employs   the  thunder,  the  wind,  the  stars  for 

purposes    of    his    own,    as    man    employs    his  arrows  and  his 

hatchet.     Does  it   not   naturally   result   from   that  conception 

that  God   fashions  these  marvellous  instruments  just  as  man 


RELIGIOUS  METAPHYSICS.  105 

fashions  his  arrows  and  hatchet  ?  If  the  little  peasant  girl,  of 
whom  we  spoke  above,  had  not  seen  her  father  repair  or  make 
his  tools,  make  a  fire,  make  bread,  till  the  soil,  she  would 
never  have  asked  who  made  the  flowers  in  the  garden.  The 
child's  first  tvhy  involves  the  following  reasoning  :  Somebody 
has  acted  on  this  thing  as  I  myself  have  acted  on  such  and 
such  another  thing  ;  who,  then,  in  the  present  case  is  it  ?  The 
abstract  notion  of  causality  is  a  consequence  of  the  practical 
development  of  our  own  causality  ;  the  greater  the  number 
of  things  that  one  can  make  one's  self,  the  greater  one's  aston- 
ishment at  seeing  things  done  by  other  people  with  greater 
rapidity  or  on  a  larger  scale.  The  more  bound  down  one  is 
one's  self,  to  the  employment  of  tedious  artifice,  the  more  one 
admires  what  is  produced  suddenly  by  a  power  which  is  ap- 
parently extraordinary.  So  that  the  notion  of  a  miracle  thus 
more  naturally  arose  from  one's  experience  of  the  practical 
arts,  than,  so  to  speak,  from  brute  experience,  and  for  the  rest 
contained  no  element  which  was  contradictory  to  the  naive 
science  of  the  earliest  observers.  Every  question  presupposes 
a  certain  kind  and  amount  of  action  on  the  part  of  the  ques- 
tioner;  one  does  not  demand  the  cause  of  an  event  until  one 
has  one's  self  been  the  conscious  cause  of  such  and  such 
another  event.  If  man  possessed  no  influence  in  the  world, 
he  would  not  ask  himself  who  made  the  world.  The^jnason's 
trowel  and  carpenter's  saw  have  played  a  considerable  part  in 
the  development  of  religious  metaphysics. 

Remark,  also,  how  easy  it  is,  even  at  the  present  day,  to  con- 
found the  word  make  with  the  word  create,  which  indeed  did 

„  .      ,  not   exist  in  primitive  times.     How  should  one 
Notion  of  crea-  ^  r      1  •  r 

tion  ex nihilo of  distinguish    precisely    what    one    fashions    from 

empirical  origin.  ^^,j^^^  ^^^^  Creates?     There  is  a  certain  element  of 

creation  in  fashioning;  and  this  element  sometimes  positively 
assumes  a  magical  character,  seems  to  rise  ex  nihilo.  What  a 
marvel,  for  example,  is  a  spark  of  fire  obtained  from  stone  or 
wood  !  The  Hindus  see  in  it  the  symbol  of  generation.  In 
fire  the  earliest  races  of  men  laid  their  fingers  on  the  miracu- 
lous. In  appearance  the  pebble  one  strikes  or  the  dried 
wood  one  rubs  to  produce  a  spark  is  not  itself  consumed  ;  it 


io6      GEA'ESIS  OF  KE/JGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE   SOCIETIES. 

gives  without  loss,  it  creates.  The  first  man  who  discov- 
ered the  secret  of  producing  fire  seemed  to  have  introduced 
something  genuinely  new  into  the  v/orld,  to  have  ravished 
the  power  of  creation  from  the  gods.  In  general,  what 
distinguishes  the  artist,  properly  so  called,  from  the  simple 
workman  is  the  feeling  that  he  possesses  a  power  which  he 
does  not  understand,  that  he  produces  in  some  sense  more 
than  he  aims  at,  that  he  is  lifted  above  himself ;  genius  is  not 
fully  conscious,  as  simple  talent  is,  of  its  resources ;  it  contains' 
an  element  of  the  unforeseen,  a  force  which  is  not  calculable  in 
advance,  a  creative  power  ;  and  therein  lies  the  secret  of  the 
true  artist's  personal  pride.  Even  in  a  matter  of  purely  physi- 
cal power  a  superexcitation  of  the  nervous  system  may  place 
at  one's  disposal  an  amount  of  muscular  energy  one  did  not 
suppose  one  possessed  :  the  athlete,  no  more  than  the  thinker, 
at  such  times  knows  the  limits  of  his  own  strength  and  the 
marvels  of  which  he  is  capable.  Each  of  us  possesses  thus, 
during  certain  hours  of  his  existence,  the  consciousness  of  a 
more  or  less  creative  power,  of  the  direct  production  of  some- 
thing out  of  nothing.  One  feels  that  one  has  produced  by 
force  of  will  a  result  that  one's  intelligence  cani.ot  wholly 
account  for,  that  one  cannot  rationally  explain.  Therein  lies 
the  foundation  and  in  a  measure  the  justification  of  a  belief 
in  miracles,  in  the  extraordinary  power  of  certain  men,  and, 
in  the  last  analysis,  in  a  power  of  creating.  This  indefinite 
power  that  man  sometimes  feels  well  up  within  him,  he  natu- 
rally ascribes  to  his  gods.  Since  he  conceives  them  as  acting 
upon  the  world  in  a  manner  analogous  to  himself,  he  con- 
ceives them  as  capable  of  giving  rise  to  new  elements  in  the 
world  ;  and  this  notion  of  creative  power  once  introduced 
continuously  develops  till  the  day  when  it  leads  one,  from 
induction  to  induction,  to  the  belief  that  the  entire  world  is 
the  work  of  a  divinity,  that  the  earth  and  the  stars  have  been 
fashioned  and  created  by  a  supernatural  volition.  If  man  can 
strike  fire  out  of  a  stone,  why  might  not  God  strike  a  sun  out 
of  the  firmament?  The  conception  of  a  creator,  which  seems 
at  first  a  remote  consequence  from  a  chain  of  abstract  reason- 
ing, is  thus  one  of  the  innumerable  manifestations  of  anthro- 


RELIGIOUS  METAPHYSICS.  107 

pomorphism  ;  one  of  the  ideas  which,  at  least  originally,  seems 
to  have  been  rather  paraphysical  than  metaphysical.  It  rests 
at  bottom  upon  an  ignorance  of  the  possible  transformation 
and  actual  equivalents  of  forces,  owing  to  which  every  appar- 
ent creation  is  resolvable  into  a  substantial  equivalence  and 
every  apparent  miracle  into  an  exemplification  of  immutable 
order. 

To  sum  up,  the  creative  power  once  ascribed  to  God  is  in 
our  opinion  an  extension  of  the  notion  of  special  Providence, 
which  itself  is  of  empirical  origin.  When  theo- 
ummary.  logians  nowadays  begin  by  establishing  the  crea- 
tion, in  order  therefrom  to  deduce  a  special  Providence,  they  are 
precisely  inverting  the  order  of  things  as  they  appeared  in  the 
beginning.  It  is  only  through  the  continually  increasing  pre- 
occupation of  abstract  thought  and  metaphysical  speculation 
with  the  question  of  the  first  cause,  that  the  idea  of  a  creative 
deity  has  acquired  thus  a  sort  of  preponderance,  and  consti- 
tutes in  our  day  an  essential  element  in  religion.  Dualism,  as 
we  have  seen,  is  of  the  essence  of  this  notion  ;  dualism  is  the 
principal  form  under  which  the  union  of  souls  and  bodies,  the 
relation  of  a  special  providence  to  natural  laws,  the  relation 
of  creator  to  created  has  been  conceived.  The  notion,  how- 
ever, of  a  supreme  unity  running  through  all  things  has  been 
caught  more  or  less  vague  glimpses  of,  from  remote  times 
down  to  the  present  day.  And  it  is  on  this  notion  that  pan- 
theistic and  monistic  religions,  principally  those  of  India,  are 
based.  Brahmanism  and  Buddhism  tend  to  what  has  been 
called  "  absolute  illusionism  "  for  the  benefit  of  a  unity  in  which 
the  supreme  being  takes  for  us  the  form  of  non-existence. 

The   temptation   is   natural   systematically  to   class   diverse 
systems   of  religious   metaphysics  and  to   represent   them   as 
Dangers  of  evolving,  one  after  the  other  in  a  regular  order,  con- 

effort  to  classify  formable  to  a  more  or  less  determinate  scheme  ; 
reSsleta-  but  one  must  be  on  one's  guard  here  against  two 
physics.  things  :  first,  the  seduction  of  a  system,  with  the 

metaphysical  abstractions  to  which  it  leads;  second,  the 
pretense  of  finding  everywhere  a  regular  progress  constantly 
headed  toward  religious  unity.     Religious  philosophers  have 


lo8      GE.VESIS  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

erred  in  both  these  respects;  Hegel,  for  example,  yielded  to 
the  temptation  of  imposing  upon  the  history  of  religion  his 
monotonous  trilogy,  of  thesis,  antithesis,  and  synthesis.  In  Von 
Hartmann  the  Hegelian  spirit,  influenced  by  Schopenhauer, 
still  survives.  We  have  seen  Von  Hartmann  borrowing  from 
Max  Miiller  the  abstract  conception  of  a  divinity  at  once 
unified  and  multiple,  a  species  of  primitive  synthesis  out  of 
which  historical  religions  were  to  arise  by  a  process  of  dif- 
ferentiation: out  of  henotheism,  as  out  of  matter  still  void' 
and  without  form,  was  to  arise  polytheism,  and  then  by  a 
process  of  degenerescence  was  to  arise  polydemonism  or 
animism,  and  finally  fetichism.'  This  order  of  development, 
as  we  have  seen,  is  contrary  to  matter  of  fact. 

Fetichism,  understood  simply  as  the  ascription  of  life  to 
natural  objects,  is  primitive.  Animism,  or  the  conception  of 
indwelling  spirit,  arises  subsequently.  Polytheism,  or  the 
worship  of  a  certain  number  of  analogous  objects,  such  as  the 
trees  of  a  forest,  implies  some  distinction  between  the  deity 
and  the  forest,  whereas  fetichism  limits  itself  strictly  to  the 
animation  of  each  particular  tree,  and  finally  henotheism,  or 

'  "  Henotheism,"  says  Von  Hartmann,  "  rests  upon  a  contradiction.  Man  goes 
forth  in  search  of  divinity,  and  finds  gods.  He  addresses  each  of  tliese  divinities 
in  succession  in  the  hope  tliat  he  may  be  the  divinity  sought  for,  and  confers  upon 
him  a  multitude  of  predicates  which  call  in  question  the  divinity  of  the  other  gods. 
Obliged,  however,  as  he  is  to  look  to  different  gods  for  the  fulfilment  of  his 
respective  demands  he  is  unable  to  remain  faithful  to  any  one  of  them  ;  he  changes 
his  object  of  adoration  repeatedly  and  each  time  acts  t(j\vard  the  god  he  is  address- 
ing as  if  he  were  god  par  excellence,  without  indeed  himself  observing  at  the  time 
that  he  is  denying  the  supreme  divinity  of  any  god  by  attributing  it  in  turn  to  each 
of  them.  What  renders  the  origin  of  religion  possible  is  that  this  contradiction  is 
not  at  first  remarked  ;  a  persistent  failure  to  recognize  such  a  contradiction  would 
not  be  possible  in  the  midst  of  the  progress  of  civilization,  except  in  the  case  of  an 
extreme  intensity  of  religious  sentiment,  which  shields  all  religious  subjects  from 
rational  criticism.  Such  intensity  of  religious  sentiment  neither  exists  in  all  places 
nor  at  all  times,  and  a  spirit  of  intellectual  criticism,  operating  intermittently,  suffices 
in  the  long  run  to  render  the  point  of  view  of  henotheism  untenable.  Two  ways 
of  avoiding  the  contradiction  in  question  offer  themselves.  One  may  maintain  the 
unity  of  God  at  the  exjiense  of  the  jilurality,  or,  on  the  contrary,  plurality  of  God  at 
the  expense  of  the  unity.  The  first  way  leads  to  abstract  monism,  the  second  to 
polytheism  ;  and  out  of  polytheism,  by  a  process  of  degeneration,  arise  polydemon- 
ism or  animism  and  then  fetichism." 


RELIGIOUS  METAPHYSICS.  109 

the  vague  conception  of  an  indwelling  divinity  in  all  things, 
is  ulterior  and  derivative.  Monistic  pantheism  or  monism  lies 
but  one  step  beyond. 

Remark  also  that  Von  Hartmann,  who  endeavours  to  prove 

that  a  vague  monism  is  the  primitive  form  of  religion,  regards 

^    .   „  the  Vedas  as  a  fair  example  of  the  earliest  form 

Logically  pos-  ^ 

terior  often  his-  of  natural  religion,  traces  of  which  remain  more 
torically  prior.  ^^  j^^^  distinctly  manifest  in  all  mythologies. 
But  this  is  positively  to  forget  that  for  an  anthropologist  the 
Vedas  are  quite  modern  compositions,  and  that  Hindu 
literature  belongs  to  a  period  of  high  refinement  and  civiliza- 
tion. Monistic  metaphysics  may  be  the  ultimate  goal  toward 
which  all  religions  tend,  but  it  is  at  least  not  the  point  of 
departure.  Finally,  Von  Hartmann  endeavours  to  establish 
the  fact  of  a  certain  logical  order  in  religious  development, 
a  progress.  This  progress  does  not  exist  in  history  nor  any- 
where outside  of  the  abstract  system  constructed  by  Von 
Hartmann  ;  it  is  dialectic,  not  historic.  The  divers  religious 
points  of  view  have  often  coincided  in  history  ;  and  sometimes 
a  logically  superior  point  of  view  has  even  preceded  an 
inferior. 

Another  classification,  not  less  open  to  suspicion  than  that 
of  Von  Hartmann,  is  the  celebrated  Comtist  progression  from 
,  .  .„  fetichism  to  polytheism  and  from  polytheism  to 
cation  logical,  not  monism.  In  this  classification  the  framework  no 
psychological,  longer  consists  of  metaphysical  abstractions,  but 
of  numbers.  But  numbers  also  possess  their  artificial  and 
superficial  side  ;  they  do  not  express  the  most  fundamental 
aspects  of  religion.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  a  matter  of  extreme 
difficulty  to  perceive  any  radical  difference  between  naturistic 
fetichism  and  polytheism.  Multiplicity  of  divinities  is  a  char- 
acteristic common  to  both.  The  sole  difference  that  Comte 
was  able  to  establish  is  that  in  polytheism  a  whole  class  of 
objects,  for  example  all  the  trees  of  a  forest,  or  a  whole  class 
of  phenomena,  as  lightning  and  storm,  is  represented  by 
one  divinity.  But  this  species  of  abstraction  and  generaliza- 
tion is  much  less  important,  much  more  exterior  and  purely 
logical,  than  the  psychological  and  metaphysical  progression 


no      GENESIS  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

from  a  grossly  unitarian  and  concrete  naturism  to  a  dualistic 
animism.  This  latter  line  of  development  is  in  the  direction 
of  naturalistic  and  spiritualistic  metaphysics,  which  possess  a 
deeper  significance  than  a  system  of  mathematical  enumera- 
tion and  logical  generalization.  The  passage  from  polytheism 
to  monotheism  is  also  conceived  by  Comte  somewhat  too 
mathematically.  Polytheism  early  resulted  in  a  certain 
hierarchy  and  subordination  of  the  whole  body  of  individual 
deities  to  some  one  powerful  god  :  Jupiter,  Fate,  etc.  On  the- 
other  hand,  monotheism  has  always  provided  some  place  for 
secondary  divinities — angels,  devils,  spirits  of  every  kind,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  trinitarian  conception  of  the  Godhead 
itself.  Mathematical  terms,  in  this  connection,  obscure  pro- 
found problems  which  belong  really  to  metaphysics  and  to 
morals. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  metaphysics  the  great  question 

is  that  of  the  relation  which  exists  between  the  divinity  and 

the    world    and    mankind  ;    a    relation   of    imma- 

The real classi-    j^gj^^^g  q^  of  transcendence,  of  duality  or  of  unity, 
fication.  •'  . 

We  have  seen  that,  from  this  point  of  view, 
religions  have  passed  from  an  extremely  vague  primitive 
immanence  to  a  relation  of  transcendence  and  of  separation, 
ultimately  to  return,  sometimes  with  comparative  rapidity  (as 
in  India),  sometimes  very  slowly  (as  among  Christian  nations), 
to  the  notion  of  an  immanent  God  in  whom  we  live  and  move 
and  have  our  being. 

Along  with  this  difference  of  conception  there  necessarily 
goes  a  corresponding  difference  in  the  parts  ascribed  respec- 
tively to  determinism  and  natural  law,  and  to  the 
cISnTof""  arbitrary  will  of  the  deity  or  deities.  That  is  to 
determmistic  con-  g^y,  the  conflict  between  religion  and  science, 
ception.  ^^    what    will    one     day     become    such,    exists 

implicitly  in  the  earliest  conceptions  of  the  world.  In  the 
beginning,  to  be  sure,  there  being  no  such  thing  as  science 
properly  so  called,  no  conflict  is  apparent;  one  explains  what- 
ever one  chooses  as  the  product  of  an  arbitrary  will,  then  little 
by  little  the  regularity,  the  determinism,  the  orderliness  of 
certain     phenomena  are    remarked.     Divinities    cease    to    be 


RELIGIOUS  METAPHYSICS.  m 

absolute  princes,  and  become  more  or  less  constitutional 
sovereigns.  Therein  lies  the  law  of  religious  evolution,  which 
is  much  more  significant  than  the  law  promulgated  by  Comte ; 
humanity  tends  progressively  to  restrict  the  number  of  the 
phenomena  with  the  natural  course  of  which  the  gods  are 
supposed  to  interfere  ;  the  sphere  of  natural  law  tends  pro- 
gressively to  become  more  and  more  nearly  all-comprehensive. 
The  Catholic  nowadays  no  longer  believes  that  a  goddess 
brings  his  crops  to  maturity  or  that  a  particular  god  launches 
a  thunder-bolt,  though  he  is  still  profoundly  inclined  to  imag- 
ine that  God  blesses  his  fields  or  punishes  him  by  destroying 
his  house  by  a  flash  of  lightning  ;  arbitrary  power  tends  to 
be  concentrated  in  a  single  being  placed  on  a  height  above 
nature.  At  a  still  further  stage  in  the  course  of  evolution, 
the  will  of  this  being  is  conceived  as  expressed  in  the  laws  of 
nature  themselves  without  allowing  for  the  existence  of 
miraculous  exceptions  ;  Providence,  the  Divinity,  becomes 
inunanent  in  the  scientific  ordering  and  determinism  of  the 
world.  In  this  respect  the  Hindus  and  the  Stoics  are  far 
in  advance  of  the  Catholics. 

The  absorption  of  the   respective  worships  of  a  number  of 

deities  into  the  worship  of  one  deity  has  been  an  incidental 

consequence    of    the    progress   of   science.     Hu- 

Unification  of  .  ,  ,  rr      ■  i .  • .     j  r 

creeds  incidental     manity    began    by    offermg    up    a    multitude    of 

to  that  encroach-     special  services   to  a  multitude  of   special   gods, 
ment.  ...... 

If  one  were  to  believe  certain  linguists,  it  is  true, 

natural  objects — the  sun,  fire,  the  moon— were  at  first  adored 
as  impersonal  entities  ;  their  subsequent  personification  being 
due  to  a  too  literal  interpretation  of  figurative  impressions 
habitually  employed  to  designate  them,  such  as  Zev's,  the 
brilliant.  Certain  myths,  no  doubt,  did  spring  from  this  source  : 
nomina,  niimina  ;  but  humanity  does  not  usually  progress  from 
the  general  to  the  particular.  Primitive  religion,  on  the  con- 
trary, was  at  first  subdivided  or  rather  simply  divided  into  cults 
of  all  sorts ;  it  was  only  later  that  simplifications  and  generaliza- 
tions arose.  The  passage  from  fetichism  to  polytheism  and 
to  monotheism  was  simply  the  consequence  of  a  progressively 
scientific  conception  of  the  world  ;  of  the  progressive  absorp- 


112      GEA^ES/S   OF  KELIGIOXS  IN  PRIMITIVE   SOCIETIES. 

tion  of  the  several  transcendent   powers  into  a  single  power 

immanent  in  the  laws  of  the  u.iiverse. 

More  important   still  than   tliis  metaphysical  and  scientific 

evolution  of  religion  is  the  sociological  and  moral  evolution. 

What   is   really   important   in  a  religious  theory 
Development  of    .       ,  ,,  •        i         i    ^-  r    ^i 

sociological  and      '■''    ^^ss    the    conceiveu    relation    of    the    primary 

moral  sides  of        substance   to  its  manifestations  in   the  universe, 
religion.  ,  ,  .,  -i       i  i  •  i  i 

than  the  attributes  ascribed  to  this  substance  and 
to  the  inhabitants  of  the  universe.  In  other  words,  what  sort' 
of  a  society  does  the  universe  constitute?  What  sort  of  social 
relation  more  or  less  moral  between  the  various  members  are 
derivable  from  the  fundamental  tie  which  binds  them  to  the 
principle  which  is  immanent  in  all  of  them  .''  That  is  the  great 
problem  for  which  the  others  simply  constitute  a  preparation. 
The  problem  is  to  interpret  the  true  foundation  of  beings  and 
of  being,  independently  of  numerical,  logical,  and  even  meta- 
physical relations.  Well,  such  an  interpretation  cannot  be 
other  than  psychological  and  moral.  Psychologically,  power 
was  the  first  and  essential  attribute  of  divinity,  and  this  power 
was  conceived  as  redoubtable.  Intelligence,  knowledge,  fore- 
knowledge, were  only  at  a  later  period  ascribed  to  the  gods. 
And  finally,  divine  morality,  under  the  twofold  aspects  of  jus- 
tice and  goodness,  is  a  very  late  conception  indeed.  We  shall 
see  it  develop  side  by  side  with  the  development  of  the  sys- 
tems of  practical  morals  that  are  incident  to  religion. 


CHAPTER  III. 

RELIGIOUS   MORALS. 

I.  The  laws  which  regulate  the  social  relations  between  gods  and 
men — Morality  and  immorality  in  primitive  religions — Extension 
of  friendly  and  hostile  relations  to  the  sphere  of  the  gods — 
Primitive  inability  in  matters  of  conscience,  as  in  matters  of  art, 
to  distinguish  the  great  from  the  monstrous. 

n.  The  moral  sanction  in  the  society  which  includes  gods  and 
men — Patronage — That  divine  intervention  tends  always  to  be 
conceived  after  the  model  of  human  intervention  and  to  sanc- 
tion it. 

III.  Worship  and  religious  rites — Principles  of  reciprocity  and  pro- 
portionality in  the  exchange  of  services — Sacrifice — Principle  of 
coercion  and  incantation — Principle  of  habit  and  its  relation 
to  rites — Sorcery — Sacerdotalism  —  Prophecy — The  externals  of 
worship — Dramatization  and  religious  aesthetics. 

IV.  Subjective  worship — Adoration  and  love ;  their  psychological 
origin. 

/.    The  laws  wliicJi  regulate  the  social  relations  betweeii  gods 
and  men. 

We  are  today  inclined  to  see  everywhere  a  very  intimate 
relation  between  religion  and  morals,  since  Kant  recognized  in 
ethics  the  aim  and  sole    foundation  of  the  con- 
morals  not  ception  of  God.     In  the  beginning  nothing  of  the 

originally  sort   existed.       It    is    plain    from    the    preceding 

related.  . 

chapters    that    religion    was    at   first    a    pliysical 

explanation  of  events,  and  above  all  of  events  in  their  relation 
to  the  interests  of  mankind,  by  a  theory  of  causes  acting  for 
ends  of  their  own  after  the  manner  of  the  human  will ;  an 
explanation,  that  is  to  say,  by  causes  at  once  ef^cient  and 
final ;  and  theology  is  the  development  of  a  primitive  teleol- 
ogy. Man  imagined  himself  to  be  living  in  society  with 
beneficent  or  maleficent  beings,  at  first  visible  and  tangible, 
then  progressively  invisible   and    separate   from    the  objects 

113 


114      GENESIS  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE   SOCIETIES. 

they  inhabited.  Therein,  as  we  have  said,  lay  the  first  step  of 
reHgion.  ReHgion  was  in  the  beginning  nothing  more  than 
an  imaginative  extension  of  human  society;  the  explanation 
of  things  by  a  theory  of  volitions  analogous  to  the  volitions 
by  means  of  which  man  himself  acts  on  the  world,  but  of 
another  order,  of  a  higher  degree  of  power.  Well,  these  voli- 
tions are  sometimes  good,  sometimes  evil,  sometimes  friendly, 
sometimes  hostile  :  friendship  and  hatred  are  the  two  catego- 
ries under  which  man  inevitably  classified  the  superior  powers 
with  whom  he  believed  himself  to  be  in  relations.  Morality 
was  in  no  sense  one  of  the  distinguishing  characteristics  of 
these  powers;  man  was  quite  as  naturally  inclined  to  attribute 
to  them  wickedness  as  goodness,  or  rather  he  felt  vaguely 
that  the  rules  of  conduct  by  which  he  was  himself  bound 
were  not  necessarily  those  by  which  these  beings,  at  once 
analogous  to  men  and  so  different  from  them,  were  themselves 
bound.  Also  in  his  relations  with  the  gods,  with  the  powers 
of  nature,  man  in  nowise  believed  that  the  rules  of  mere 
human  society,  of  the  family,  of  the  tribe,  of  the  nation,  were 
always  and  in  every  respect  applicable.  Thence  it  came  that 
to  render  the  gods  propitious,  man  had  recourse  to  practices 
which  he  would  have  blamed  in  mere  human  morals:  human 
sacrifices,  anthropophagy,  sacrifices  of  virginity,  etc' 

If    one  stops  to  recollect   that    moral   laws  are   in  a  great 
measure  the  expression  of  the  very  necessities  of  human  life, 

and  that  the  generality  of  certain  rules  is  due  to 
Religion  mucn  .,,  ...  ri-r  i.\ 

less  moral  than  the  uniformity  of  the  conditions  ot  lite  on  tne 
society.  surface  of  the  globe,  one  will  understand  why  it 

was  that  one's  relations  to  the  gods,  that  is  to  say  to  creatures 
of  the  imagination,  were  not  dominated  so  directly  as  one's 

'  It  has  been  remarked  that  peoples  who  for  centuries  have  renounced  anthro- 
pophagy have  long  persisted  in  human  sacrifices  :  that  thousands  of  women 
in  certain  sanctuaries  have  offered  the  painful  sacrifices  of  their  chastity  to  gods  of 
a  furious  sensuality.  The  gods  of  paganism  are  dissolute,  arbitrary,  vindictive, 
pitiless,  and  still  their  adorers  rise  little  by  little  to  a  conception  of  moral  purity,  of 
clemency,  and  of  justice.  Javeh  is  vindictive  and  ferocious,  and  yet  it  is  in  the 
midst  of  his  people  that  the  religion  par  excellence  of  benignity  and  forgiveness 
took  its  rise.  Also  the  real  morality  of  men  was  never  proportionate  to  the  fre- 
quently fanatic  intensity  of  their  religious  sentiments.  See  M.  Reville  {FroUgo- 
ntkties,  p.  281). 


RELIGIO  US  MORA LS.  115 

relations  to  one's  fellow-mcn  by  the  exigencies  of  practical  life, 
but  were  regulated  by  much  more  variable  and  fantastic  laws 
containing  often  a  visible  germ  of  immorality.  The  divine^ 
society  was  an  imaginary  extension  of  human  society,  not  anj 
imaginative  perfection  of  it.  It  was  physical  fear,  timor,  and 
not  moral  reverence,  which  gave  being  to  the  first  gods.  The 
human  imagination,  labouring  thus  under  the  empire  of  fear, 
naturally  gave  birth  to  a  prodigy  more  often  than  to  an  ideal. 
For  the  primitive  conscience,  as  for  primitive  art,  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  great  and  the  monstrous  was  by  no 
means  sufficiently  marked.  The  germ  of  immorality,  there-  \ 
fore,  not  less  than  of  morality  lies  at  the  root  of  every  religion. 
Once  more,  it  would  be  an  error  to  believe  that  religions  are 
immoral  in  that  they  are  anthropomorphic,  or  sociomorphic  ; 
rather  the  contrary  is  true,  they  are  not  moral  except  in  so 
far  as  they  are  sociomorphic.  Mutilation,  for  example,  cruelty, 
obscenity  are  foreign  to  the  conceptions  which  dominate 
human  conduct.  One  may  verify  in  every  religion  what  is 
observed  in  Christianity,  that  the  truly  moral  God  is  pre-  \ 
.  cisely  the  man-God,  Jesus,  whereas  God  the  Father,  who 
pitilessly  sacrifices  his  own  son,  is  anti-human  and  immoral, 
precisely  in  that  he  is  superhuman. 

In    effect  we  find  our    fundamental    proposition    confirmed 
afresh  :  religion  is  a  sociology  conceived  as  a  physical,  meta- 
physical, and  moral  explanation  of  'all  things ;  it 

Summary.  .      '  ,         .  r       , ,  ,  , 

IS  the  reduction  of  all  natural,  and  even  super- 
natural forces  to  a  human  type,  and  the  reduction  of  their 
relations  to  social  relations.  Also  the  progress  of  religion  has 
been  exactly  parallel  to  the  progress  in  social  evolution, 
which  has  itself  been  dominated  by  the  progress  of  subjective 
morals  and  con-science.  -The  gods  were  at  first  divided  into 
two  classes:  the  beneficent  and  the  maleficent,  who  ulti- 
mately came  to  be  recognized  as  respectively  virtuous  and 
wicked.  Then  these  two  classes  were  absorbed  into  their 
respective  chiefs,  into  Ormuzd  and  Ahriman,  into  God  and 
Satan,  into  a  principle  of  good  and  a  principle  of  evil.  Thus 
by  a  fresh  dualism  spirits  themselves  were  separated  and  ranged 
into  classes,  as  the  spirit  itself  had  previously  been  separated 


X^         OF  THI'  r 

UNIVERSITY 


') 


Ii6      GF.XES/S  OF   RELlGIOiVS  IN  PRIMITIVE   SOCIETIES. 

from  the  body.  Finally  the  principle  of  goodness  subsisted 
victoriously  under  the  name  of  God.  He  became  the  personi- 
fication of  the  moral  law  and  the  moral  sanction,  the  sove- 
reign legislator  and  judge,  in  a  word,  the  living  law  of  uni- 
versal society,  as  a  king  is  the  living  law  in  a  human  society. 
To-day  God  tends  to  be  identified  with  the  human  conscience 
purified  ad  infinitum,  and  adequate  with  the  universe.  For 
these  last  and  most  subtle  representations  of  the  religious 
sentiment,  God  is  no  more  than  a  symbol  of  the  moral  and 
the  ideal.  One  may  see  in  this  evolution  of  religious  ideas 
the  gradual  triumph  of  sociomorphism,  since  it  is  character- 
ized by  an  extension  to  the  universe  at  large  of  social  relations 
which  are  incessantly  progressing  toward  perfection  among 
men. 

//.    The  moral  sanction  in  the  society  which  includes  gods  and 
vien. 

To  the  personification  of  the  law,  religious  morals  inevitably 

joined  that  of  the  sanction  which  plays  so  capital  a  role  in 

every  human  society.     The  celestial  government 

The  gods  inevi-     ,  ,  ,  •      .-  c   ^\        \ 

tably  become  pro-    has  always  been  a  projection  ot  the  human  gov- 

tectors  of  social  ernment,  with  a  penalty  at  first  terrible  and  sub- 
sequently softened.  To  say  the  truth,  the  theory 
of  a  sanction  is  the  systematization  of  that  of  a  providence. 
The  distinguishing  characteristic  of  a  providence  is  that  it 
awards  or  recompenses,  insomuch  that  one  may  bring  down 
upon  one's  self  or  avoid  its  anger,  by  such  and  such  conduct. ' 
Well,  the  instant  a  man  admits  that  a  divine  power  is  govern- 
ing him,  this  power  will  inevitably  appear  to  him  to  be  exer- 
cising a  control  over  his  conduct,  and,  as  it  were,  sanctioning 
it.  This  control  will  at  first  be  exercised  only  in  regard  to  the 
personal  relations  of  the  individual,  with  his  god  and  his  gods. 
But  the  individual  will  soon  recognize  that  if  the  gods  take  an 
interest  in  him  they  may  well  take  an  interest  also  in  the  other 
members  of  the  tribe,  provided  that  these  last  know  how  to 
render  them  propitious;  and  to  injure  the  other  worshippers 
of  a  god  would  be  indirectly  to  injure  the  god  himself,  and 
provoke  his  anger.     All  the  members  of  a  tribe  therefore  find 


RELIGIOUS  MORALS.  n? 

themselves  protected  against  each  other  by  their  association 
with  the  gods,  religion  lends  support  to  social  justice,  and  who- 
ever violates  social  justice  expects  the  gods  to  punish  him. 
This  expectation  also  must  have  been  confirmed  by  the  facts, 
for  if  antisocial  and  unjust  conduct  had  habitually  prevailed 
among  men,  social  life  would  have  been  impossible.  Injustice 
must  then  always  on  an  average  have  carried  its  sanction  with 
it,  and  this  sanction  must  have  appeared  to  be  the  direct  work 
of  the  gods,  passing  judgment  from  on  high  on  the  social 
•conduct  of  their  clients,  as  Roman  patrons  did,  seated  beneath 
the  columns  of  the  atrium. 

As  religions  intermingled  and  grew  in  extent,  the  clientage 
of  a  god,  at  first  extended  to  the  members  of  a  single  tribe, 
passed  beyond  its  bounds.  Men,  of  no  matter 
iuftke."^^'""''"'  what  origin,  might  become  citizens  of  the  celes- 
tial city,  of  the  superhuman  association  which 
took  charge  of  each  of  its  members,  so  that  the  divine  sanction 
tended  increasingly  to  become  confounded  with  the  moral 
sanction,  and  one  understood  that  God  protected  justice  not 
only  within  the  bosom  of  a  tribe,  but  everywhere  within  the 
limits  of  humanity. 

While  in  the  matter  of  the  sanction  the  sociomorphic  con- 
ception of  the  world  tended  thus  to  become  a  moral  conception, 
morality   itself    must    have  tended,   in   order    to 
totlrtttSs    eke  out  its  own  insufficiency,  to  ally  itself  with 

loaded  on  the  side   religion.      Human  society,  powerless  to  make  it- 

«f rectitude.  ir     i  -11  t  -^  l 

self  always  respected  by  every  one  of  its  members, 

inevitably  invoked  the  aid  of  the  society  of  superior  beings 
which  enveloped  it  on  all  sides.  Man  being  essentially  a 
social  animal,  tJHiov  -KokniKov,  could  not  be  resigned  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  success  of  antisocial  conduct,  and  whenever  it 
seemed  that  such  conduct  had  succeeded  humanly,  the  very 
nature  of  mankind  tended  to  make  it  turn  toward  the  super- 
human to  demand  a  reparation  and  a  compensation.  If  the 
bees  should  suddenly  see  their  hives  destroyed  before  their 
eyes  without  there  being  any  hope  of  ever  reconstructing 
them,  their  whole  being  would  be  shaken,  and  they  would  in- 
stinctively await  for  an  intervention  of  some  kind,  which  should 


Il8      GENESIS  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE   SOCIETIES. 

re-establish  an  order  as  immutable  and  sacred  for  them  as  that 
of  the  stars  is  for  us.  Man,  by  virtue  of  the  moral  nature  with 
which  heredity  has  furnished  him,  is  thus  inclined  to  believe 
that  wickedness  ought  not  to  have  the  last  word  in  the  uni- 
verse ;  the  triumph  of  evil  and  of  injustice  always  stirs  his 
indignation.  This  species  of  indignation  is  observable  in 
infants  almost  before  they  can  talk,  and  numerous  traces  of  it 
may  be  found  even  among  animals.  The  logical  result  of  this  _ 
instinctive  protest  against  evil  is  a  refusal  to  believe  in  its 
definitive  triumph.' 

Man,  in  whose  eyes  the  society  in  which  the  gods  live  cor- 
responds so  closely  to  human  society,  must  almost  inevitably 
imagine  the  existence  among  them  of  antisocial 

Results  m  vie-     ......  i     r-  e 

tory  being  given  bcings,  of  Ahnmans  and  batans,  protectors  ot 
in  heaven  to  prin-  g^Q  jj^  heaven  and  on  earth,  but  it  is  natural  that 

ciple  of  light. 

he  should  give   the  victory    in   the   end   to    the 

"  principle  of  good  "  over  the  "  principle  of  evil."  Of  all 
things  it  is  the  most  repugnant  to  him  to  believe  that  the  uni- 
verse is  fundamentally  indifferent  to  the  distinction  between 
good  and  evil ;  a  divinity  may  be  irascible,  capricious,  and  even 
intermittently  wicked,  but  man  cannot  understand  an  impassible 
and  cold  nature. 

The  most  powerful  of  the  gods  had  thus  served  to  reconcile 
force  and  justice,  a  barbarous  justice  appropriate  to  the  spirit 
of  primitive  man. 

Gods  legiti-  ,  1  •  1  r  •  r        i        1 

mated  by  alliance        1  hrough    the    idea    of    sanction    grafted    thus 

with  the  moral  upon  that  of  providence,  religion  assumes  a  really 
forces  of  society.         ^  .  ^  ^ 

systematic  character,  and  becomes  attached  to  the 
very  fibres  of  the  human  heart.  As  instruments  of  goodness  in 
the  universe,  the  gods,  or  at  least  the  sovereign  gods,  serve  to 
confirm  human  morality;  they  become  in  some  sort  the  life  of 
morality.  Their  existence  is  no  longer  simply  a  physical  fact; 
it  is  a  physical  fact,  morally  justified  by  a  social  instinct  which 
relies  upon  it  as  its  main  safeguard.  Henceforth  the  power  of 
the  gods  is  legitimate.  A  divine  king,  like  a  human  king, 
requires  a  certain   mystic  consecration  ;    it   is  religion   which 

'See  the  author's  Esqxiisse  aune  morale  (I.,iii.)  ;    Besoin  psychologiqtte  d'lme 
sanction. 


RELIGIOUS  MORALS.  1^9 

consecrates  human  kings,  it  is  morality  which  consecrates  the 
king  of  the  gods. 

The  notion  of  a  divine  intervention  to  trim  the  balance  of 
the  social  order,  to  punish  and  to  recompense,  was  at  first 
Importance  of  altogether  foreign  to  the  belief  in  a  continuation 
conception  of  of  life  after  death  ;  it  became  allied  to  this  belief 
LTautiSf  much  later.  Even  among  a  people  so  advanced 
of  religion.  ^s  the  Hebrews  in  matters  of  religious  evolution, 

reward  and  punishment  beyond  this  life  played  no  role, 
and  yet  there  has  scarcely  ever  been  a  people  who  be- 
lieved more  heartily  in  the  will  of  God  as  directing  the  life 
of  mankind  ;  but  in  their  eyes  God  achieved  his  victory  in  this 
life;  they  possessed  no  need  for  an  immortality  as  a  means  of 
redressine  the  moral  balance  of  the  world.'  It  was  only  later, 
when  the  critical  sense  had  attained  a  higher  development,  that 
it  was  recognized  that  the  sanction  did  not  always  come  in 
this  life ;  the  chastisement  of  the  culpable,  the  hoped-for 
recompense  of  the  virtuous,  gradually  retreated  from  the 
present  world  into  a  distant  future.  Hell  and  heaven  were 
thrown  open  to  correct  the  manifest  imperfections  of  this  life. 
The  notion  of  immortality  thus  assumed  an  extraordinary 
importance,  insomuch  that  it  seemed  as  if  modern  life  would 
be  destroyed  if  it  were  deprived  of  this  belief,  which  former 
times  had,  however,  succeeded  in  doing  without.  At  bottom  a 
clear  and  reflective  conception  of  a  life  after  death,  in  which 
one  is  rewarded  or  punished  for  one's  life  here,  is  a  very  com- 
plex  and  remote  deduction  from  the  notion  of  sanction. 

'  The  question  whether  the  Hebrews  believed  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul  has 
long  been  discussed,  and  M.  Renan  has  been  reproached  with  his  negative  attitude 
in  the  matter  ;  but  M.  Renan  never  denied  the  existence,  among  the  Hebrews,  of  a 
belief  in  a  sojourn  for  the  shadows  or  manes  of  the  dead  ;  the  whole  question  was 
whether  the  Hebrews  believed  in  a  system  of  reward  and  punishment  after 
■death,  and  M.  Renan  was  right  in  maintaining  that  any  such  notion  is  foreign  to 
primitive  Judaism.  It  is  equally  foreign  to  primitive  Hellenism.  Though  the 
living  endeavoured  to  conciliate  the  dead,  they  did  not  envy  their  fate  which,  even 
in  the  case  of  the  just,  was  worse  than  the  fate  of  the  living.  "  Seek  not  to  con- 
sole me  for  death,  noble  Ulysses."  Achilles  says,  when  he  arrives  in  Tartarus.  "  I 
would  rather  be  a  hired  labourer  and  till  a  poor  man's  field  than  reign  over  all  the 
regions  of  the  dead."  (See  Morale  d' Epicure,  3d  ed.;  Des  id^es  antiques  sur  la 
mori.) 


I20      GEA'ESIS   OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE   SOCIETIES. 

The  religious  sanction,  being  fundamentally  an  extension  of 

human  social  relations   to  the  life  of   the  gods,  successively 

assumed  the  three  forms  of  human  penalty.     At 
Religious  sane-     .  .  .        . 

tion  at  first  con-     ni'st  it  was  only  vengeance,  as  in  the  case  of  the 

ceived  as  a  lower  animals  and  of  savage  man.     It  is  evil  ren- 

vengeance.  ° 

dered  in  return  for  evil.  The  sentiment  of  ven- 
geance has  subsisted,  and  still  subsists,  in  the  bosom  of  every 
religion  which  admits  a  divine  sanction  ;  vengeance  is  confided 
to  God,  and  becomes  only  the  more  terrible.  "  Do  not  avenge  * 
yourselves,"  St.  Paul  says,  "  but  rather  give  place  unto  wrath: 
for  it  is  written,  Vengeance  is  mine  ;  I  will  repay,  saith  the 
Lord.  Therefore,  if  thine  enemy  hunger,  feed  him  ;  if  he 
thirst,  give  him  to  drink  :  for  in  so  doing  thou  shalt  heap  coals 
of  fire  on  his  head."  "  Our  patience,"  St.  Cyprian  wrote, 
"  comes  from  our  certainty  that  we  shall  be  avenged  ;  it  heaps 
coals  of  fire  upon  the  heads  of  our  enemies.  The  day  on 
which  the  Most  High  shall  number  the  faithful  shall  see  the 
culpable  in  Gehenna,  and  our  persecutors  shall  be  consumed  in 
eternal  fire  !  What  a  spectacle  for  my  transports,  my  admira- 
tion, and  my  laughter  !  "  And  by  way  of  a  refinement,  one 
of  the  martyrs  at  Carthage  told  the  pagans  to  look  him  well 
in  the  face  so  that  they  might  recognize  him  on  the  day  of 
judgment  at  the  right  hand  of  the  Father,  while  they  were 
being  precipitated  into  eternal  flame.* 

The  notion  of  vengeance,  as  it  becomes  more  subtle  and 
passes,   so   to  speak,  from   the  domain  of  passion  into  that 

of  intelligence  is  transformed  into  the  notion  of 
en  as  an         expiation,  which  is  exclusively  religious,  although 

spiritualistic  philosophers  believe  that  it  contains 
moral  and  rational  elements.  Expiation  is  a  sort  of  naive 
compensation  by  which  one  fancies  one  may  counterbalance 
moral  evil  by  accepting  physical  evil  along  with  it.  Expiation 
is  a  penalty  which  possesses  no  utility  in  the  way  of  benefiting 
the  culprit  or  those  who  might  follow  his  example  ;  it  is 
neither  corrective  nor  preventive  ;  it  is  an  alleged  satisfaction 
of  the  law,  the  re-establishment  of  an  apparent  symmetry  for 
the  delight  of  pure  intelligence,  a  public  prosecution  pure  and 

'  The  most  orthodox  theologians,  of  course,  mean  by  fire  a  veritable  flame. 


RELIGIOUS  MORALS.  121 

simple.  In  a  singular  passage  in  the  Pensecs  chr^tiennes, 
Father  Bouhours  has  clearly  and  innocently  set  in  relief  the 
inutility  of  religious  expiation:  "Penitence  of  the  damned, 
thou  art  rigorous,  and  how  useless;  could  the  anger  of  God  go 
further  than  to  punish  pleasure  so  brief  by  torments  which 
shall  never  end  ?  When  a  damned  soul  shall  have  shed  tears 
enou"h  to  fill  all  the  rivers  of  the  world,  even  if  he  should 
only  have  shed  one  a  century,  he  will  be  no  farther  ahead 
after  so  many  millions  of  years  ;  he  will  only  have  begun 
to  suffer,  and  even  when  he  shall  have  recommenced  as 
often  as  there  are  grains  of  sand  upon  the  shores  of  the  sea,  he 
shall  even  then  have  done  nothing."  The  highest  degree  of 
the  notion  of  expiation  is  in  effect  this  of  eternal  damnation. 
In  this  theory  of  the  penalty  of  damnation,  and  the  pains 
of  fire  without  end,  one  recognizes  the  barbarism  of  former 
time  and  the  torments  inflicted  on  the  vanquished  by  the 
vanquisher,  on  the  rebel  by  the  chief  of  the  tribe.  A  sort  of 
atavism  attaches  even  to  the  religion  of  love  in  this  perpetual 
inheritance  of  hatred,  of  the  customs  of  a  savage  period 
erected  into  an  eternal  and  divine  institution. 

///.    Worship  and  religions  rites. 

The  cult,  which,  so  to  speak,  is  no  more  than  the  religion 

become  visible  and  tangible,  is,  like  the  religion  itself,  simply 

_,,      ,,  the   apotheosis  of  a  certain  social   relation  :  the 

The  oult  an  ex-  J:^ 

pressionofsup-  exchange  of  services  between  men  living  in 
ElTgland  society.  Man,  who  believes  himself  to  receive 
men.  benefits  from  the  gods,  feels  himself  obliged  to 

give  something  in  exchange.  He  conceives  a  sort  of  reciproc- 
ity of  action  as  appropriate  between  God  and  man,  a  possible 
return  in  good  or  evil  conduct  ;  man  possesses  a  certain  hold 
on  his  God,  he  is  capable  of  procuring  Him  a  certain  satis- 
faction or  causing  Him  a  certain  pain,  and  God  will  reply  a 
hundred  fold  in  kind — pain  for  pain,  pleasure  for  pleasure. 

One  knows  how  gross  the  external  forms  of  worship  in  the 
beginning  were.  They  simply  consisted  in  a  practical  applica- 
tion of  the  social  economy :    the  gods  were  given  to  eat  and 


122      GENESIS  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE   SOCIETIES. 

drink  ;  an  altar  was  a  butcher's  stall  or  the  stall  of  a  wine 
merchant,  and  the  cult  was  a  veritable  commerce  between 
heaven  and  earth — a  sort  of  a  market,  in  which 
day/°'^^^'^  °"  "^^"  offered  lambs  or  sheep  and  received  in  ex- 
change riches  and  health.  In  our  days,  the  cult  is 
refined  ;  the  exchange  has  become  more  and  more  symbolic, 
the  gift  is  simply  an  expression  of  moral  homage,  for  which 
the  worshipper  expects  no  immediate  return  ;  still  the  princi- 
ple of  the  cult  is  always  the  same,  one  believes  that  an  act  on 
man's  part  possesses  a  direct  influence  on  the  will  of  God,  and 
this  act  consists  in  offerings  or  prayers  fixed  on  beforehand. 

Another  principle  of  primitive  cult  is  proportionality.     One 
can  expect  no  more  from  another  than  a  proportionate  return  ; 
Governed bv       ^°^  three  times  before  him,  and  he  will  be  better 
the  law  of  the         disposed  toward  you  than  if  you  bow  but  once; 
"^"  ^ '  offer  him  a  beef,   and  he  will  be  more  grateful 

than  if  you  offer  an  ^g<g.  Accordingly,  to  an  uncultivated 
and  superstitious  mind,  it  follows  that  quantity  and  number 
should  regulate  our  relations  with  the  gods  as  they  regulate 
our  relations  with  our  fellow-men  ;  multiply  your  prayers,  and 
you  will  multiply  your  chances  of  favours ;  three  Paternosters 
go  farther  than  one,  a  dozen  candles  will  produce  a  much 
greater  effect  than  a  single  candle.  A  prayer  that  you  go 
to  a  temple  to  say  in  public,  a  cantique  chanted  in  a  sonorous 
voice,  will  attract  more  attention  than  a  silent  demand  formu- 
lated at  the  bottom  of  one's  heart.  Similarly,  if  one  wishes 
to  obtain  rain  or  sun  for  the  crops,  it  is  into  the  fields  that 
one  must  go  to  offer  up  one's  prayer,  in  a  motley  file  of  chant- 
ing worshippers  ;  it  is  always  serviceable  to  point  one's  finger 
at  what  one  wants,  and  to  make  the  demand  in  person.  The 
better  to  stimulate  the  memory  of  one's  idol  primitive  man 
was  accustomed  to  drive  a  nail  into  him,  and  the  custom  still 
survives  in  Brittany  in  the  form  of  thrusting  pins  into  the 
bodies  of  the  saints.  Out  of  sight,  out  of  mind,  holds  good 
both  of  gods  and  saints.  To  simple  minds  it  would  be  con- 
trary to  the  law  of  proportionate  exchange  for  a  simple 
thought,  a  silent  prayer,  to  receive  such  favour  in  the  eyes  of 
the  gods  as  an  overt  act. 


RELIGIOUS  MORALS.  123 

Every   religion    insists    upon    some    quite    determinate    ex- 
terior form    of  worship,  a  precise    manifestation,  a    creed  ;  it 
endeavours   to   incorporate  itself    into   a   certain 
Embodied  in        number  of  rites  and  customs,  which  are  numerous 

fixed  forms,  . 

and  inviolable  in  proportion  as  the  religion  is 
primitive.  The  universality  of  an  external  form  of  worship  in 
the  different  religions  of  the  world  is  the  consequence  and  the 
most  striking  proof  of  their  sociomorphic  origin.  Man  has 
always  believed  that  he  might  be  useful  and  agreeable  to  his 
gods  so  long  as  he  has  conceived  them  as  analogous  to  himself 
and  to  his  neighbours. 

Add  that  to  the  notion  of  seducing  the  gods  that  of  con- 
straining is  soon  joined.     To  the  conception  of  an  exchange 

^^. ,  of   services  is  soon  joined   that  of   a  species    of 

Which  soon  •'  ^ 

came  to  be  con-  coercion  excrcised  in  some  vague  manner  by  the 
ceived  as  coercive,  intermediation  of  some  friendly  god  or  even  by 
some  simple  magic  formula  which  has  once  succeeded,  once 
procured  the  object  demanded  !  Formulae  consecrated  by 
custom  appear  to  be  equally  binding  on  gods  and  men.  Accord- 
ingly the  cult,  at  first  more  or  less  loose,  more  or  less  arbitrary, 
ultimately  becomes  minutely  regulated  ;  ultimately  becomes 
what  one  knows  as  a  rite.  A  rite,  at  its  lowest,  is  simply  the 
result  of  a  tendency  to  repeat  indefinitely  an  act  which,  at 
some  time  or  other,  has  seemed  to  render  a  god  or  a  fetich 
propitious.  After  propitiation  comes  mechanical  custom. 
Religion,  as  Pascal  well  said,  is  to  a  large  extent  habit.  Rites 
are  born  of  the  need  to  perform  again  and  again  the  same  act, 
under  the  same  circumstances  ;  a  need  which  is  the  foundation 
of  custom,  and  without  which  all  life  would  be  impossible. 
Moreover,  there  is  something  sacred  in  every  habit  whatsoever, 
and  every  act,  whatever  it  may  be,  tends  to  become  a  habit 
and  by  that  fact  to  become  respectable,  to  be  in  some  sort 
self-consecrated.  Rites,  therefore,  strike  root  in  the  very 
foundations  of  our  being  ;  the  need  for  rites  manifests  itself 
very  early  in  the  life  of  the  child.  Children  not  only  imitate 
other  peop!e  and  themselves,  repeat  other  people  and  them- 
selves, but  exact  a  scrupulous  precision  in  these  repetitions  ; 


124      GENESIS  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE   SOCIETIES. 

in  general  they  do  not  distinguish  the  end  from  the  means  by 
which,  and  the  circumstances  under  which,  it  is  pursued  ;  they 
do  not  yet  possess  a  sufficiently  exercised  intelligence  to  under- 
stand that  the  same  line  of  action  may  lead  to  the  same  result 
in  different  ways  and  under  different  circumstances.  I  once 
observed  a  child  of  from  eighteen  months  to  two  years  old  : 
if  I  got  up  from  my  armchair  and  paraded  about  the  room  for 
its  amusement,  and  stopped,  it  was  necessary  before  beginning 
once  more  that  I  should  return  to  my  seat ;  the  child's  pleasure* 
was  much  diminished  if  the  repetition  was  not  exact.  The 
child  was  accustomed  to  be  fed  by  a  number  of  people  indif- 
ferently;  still  if  I  had  given  it  some  one  thing — milk  to  drink, 
for  example — a  number  of  times,  it  was  no  longer  satisfied  to 
receive  milk  from  anybody  else,  and  insisted  that  the  same 
person  should  always  give  it  the  same  thing.  If,  on  leaving  the 
house,  I  took  another  cane  than  my  own,  the  child  would  take 
it  away  from  me  to  put  it  back  where  it  belonged.  It  was 
unwilling  that  one  should  wear  one's  hat  in  the  house  or  go 
bare-headed  out  of  doors.  And  finally,  I  saw  it  achieve  a 
veritable  bit  of  ceremonial  on  its  own  account.  It  had  been 
accustomed  to  be  told  to  call  a  domestic  at  the  top  of  the 
servants'  stairway ;  one  day  the  domestic  was  in  the  room 
when  the  child  was  told  to  call  her  ;  the  child  looked  at  her, 
turned  about,  went  to  the  top  of  the  stairway  where  it  usually 
called  her,  and  there  only  shouted  out  her  name.  All  the  con- 
duct of  life,  in  effect  the  most  important  as  the  most  insignifi- 
cant, is  classified  in  a  child's  head,  rigorously  defined,  and 
modelled  on  the  type  of  the  first  act  of  that  kind  that  has 
caught  its  attention,  without  the  child's  ever  being  able  to  dis- 
tinguish the  object  of  an  act  from  its  form.  This  confusion 
between  purpose  and  form  exists  in  a  no  less  striking  degree 
among  savages  and  primitive  peoples,  and  it  is  upon  this  very 
confusion  that  the  sacred  character  of  religious  rites  is 
founded. 

The  trouble  that  is  apparent  in  a  child  or  an  uncultivated 
man  in  the  presence  of  whatever  deranges  his  established 
association  of  ideas,  has  been  explained  by  a  pure  and  simple 
horror  of    novelty.     Lombroso    has   even    coined  a  word    to 


RELIGIOUS  MORALS.  125 

designate  this  psychological  state  ;  he  has  called  it  viisoneism. 

But  let  us  not  confound  two  quite  distinct  things,  a  honor  of 

Primitive  man     a  breach  of  custom  andahorror  of  novelty;  there 

possesses  a  repng-    ^j-e  new  perceptions,  and  habits  that  may  be  added 

nance  not  to  nov-  ,  1      ,       ,       1  <•      1  1  ■   4.  • 

eltybuttoa  to   the  whole  body   of  already   existing    percep- 

breach  of  custom,  tions  and  habits  without  deranging  them  much 
or  at  all  ;  and  against  these  neither  the  savage  nor  the  child 
rebels.  Though  the  child  never  wearies  of  listening  to  the 
same  tale  and  becomes  irritated  the  moment  one  alters  its  least 
detail,  it  will  listen  no  less  passionately  to  a  new  tale  ;  and 
new  toys  and  new  walks  delight  it.  The  same  taste  for 
novelty  is  observable  among  savages,  just  in  so  far  as  it  can  be 
gratified  without  disturbing  their  preconceived  ideas.  Primitive 
man  is  like  the  miser  who  will  not  part  with  any  of  his  acquired 
treasure,  but  asks  nothing  better  than  to  increase  it.  He  is 
naturally  curious,  but  he  has  no  desire  to  push  his  curiosity  to 
the  point  of  contradicting  what  he  knows  already  or  believes 
he  knows.  And  in  a  measure  he  is  right,  he  is  simply  obeying 
the  powerful  instinct  of  intellectual  self-preservation ;  his 
intelligence  is  not  sufficiently  supple  constantly  to  knit  and 
unknit  the  associations  of  ideas  which  experience  has  estab- 
lished in  him.  A  black,  out  of  an  attachment  for  Livingstone, 
wished  to  accompany  him  to  Europe ;  a  few  days  on  the 
steamer  drove  him  insane.  It  is,  therefore,  in  obedience  to  a 
certain  branch  of  the  instinct  of  self-preservation  that  primitive 
peoples  are  so  conservative  in  their  customs  and  rites ;  but 
they  show  themselves  no  less  willing  to  appropriate  the 
customs  and  rites  of  other  people  whenever  they  can  do  so 
without  abandoning  their  own.  The  Romans  ultimately  came 
to  accept  the  cult  of  all  the  peoples  in  the  world  without,  how- 
ever, any  abandonment  of  their  national  cult ;  and  fetes,  which 
are  properly  survivals  of  paganism,  subsist  even  at  the  present 
day  ;  one  acquires  superstition,  and  customs,  much  more  easily 
than  one  loses  them. 

The  power  of  example  contributes  also  to  lend  an  additional 
stability  to  the  public  cult;  an  individual  becomes  hardened 
in  a  practice  which  he  finds  universal  in  the  society  in 
which    he    lives.      Thence    comes   the    importance    of   public 


126      G  EXE  SIS  OE  RELIGIONS  EV  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

worship  ;    the  practice  of  pubHc  worship  makes  those  who  ab- 
stain from  it  conspicuous.     Public  worship  is  a  7>iva  voce  poll. 
Everyone  sits  in  judgment  upon  you,  all  of  your 

Worship  in  .  ,  in 

public  confirms  acquaintances  become  your  accusers,  and  all 
cilt-  men  who  worship  God   are   your  enemies.     Not 

to  think  as  everybody  else  does  is  comprehensible — but 
not  to  act  as  everybody  else  does !  To  wish  to  break  away 
from  the  servitude  of  action  which,  once  established,  tends  to 
perpetuate  itself!  In  the  end  the  machine  bends;  one' 
becomes  brutalized.  Even  among  people  of  superior  minds  the 
force  of  habit  is  incredible.  In  the  hours  of  doubt,  in  his 
youth,  M.  Renan  wrote  to  his  adviser :  "  I  recite  the  Psalms  ; 
I  could  pass  hours  and  hours,  if  I  but  followed  my  own  incli- 
nation, in  the  churches.  .  .  I  experience  lively  returns  of  devo- 
tion. .  .  At  times  I  am  simultaneously  both  Catholic  and 
rationalist  !  When  one  cuts  loose  from  such  beliefs,  beliefs 
which  have  become  a  second  nature  to  one,  it  seems  as  if 
one  has  severed  one's  self  from  one's  whole  past.  One  has  in 
some  sense  lived  them,  and  one  is  attached  to  them  as  to  one's 
own  life  ;  to  abandon  them  is  to  resolve  to  die  to  one's  self. 
It  seems  as  if  one's  entire  strength  had  come  from  them  and 
that  one  will  be  as  feeble  as  a  child  when  one  has  lost  them  ; 
they  are  to  one  what  Samson's  hair  was  to  him.  Happily 
they  will  grow  again." 

Priesthood  is  a  consequence  of  the  establishment  of  rites. 

The  priest  is  the  man  supposed  to  be  most  capable  of  influenc- 

Priesthooda        '"^  ^^^^  divinity  by  a  minute  and  learned  observa- 

consequence  of  tion  of  the  sacred  rites.  Rites,  in  effect,  the 
established  rites.  .     .  ^  ,  i  •      ■      i    i_ 

moment  they  become  complicated  by  an  accu- 
mulation of  diverse  customs  lie  beyond  the  knowledge  and 
power  of  the  ordinary  man  ;  it  requires  a  special  education  to 
talk  to  the  gods  in  the  complex  language  which  alone  they 
understand,  in  the  formulae  which  coerce  their  wills.  Who- 
ever possesses  this  imagination  is  a  species  of  magician  or 
sorcerer;  and  the  priesthood  arose  out  of  sorcery,  of  which  it 
was  simply  the  regular  organization.' 

'  "  Sorcery,  in  the  beginning  purely  individual  and  fantastic,"  says  M.  Reville, 
"gradually  develops  into  sacerdotalism  and  by  that  change,  having  become  a  perma- 


RELIGIOUS  MORALS.  127 

The   externals  of  worship  remain  to-day,  in  special  in   the 

Catholic  and  Greek  religions,  a  collection  of  traditional,  inflexi- 

Tendencyof        ^^^    formulae,    which     could     not    be    trusted    to 

priest  to  become  a    produce   their  effect   if  a  word   or  a   gesture   in 

sacred  person.  ,1  1  j  ^     • 

tncni     were     changed ;     certain     ceremonies    are 
really    veritable    traditional    forms    of    incantation.        Rites 
resemble  the  invisible  bonds  in  which  Faust  held  the  Devil ; 
but  it  is  God  himself  in  this  case  that  is  enchanted,  charmed, 
and    overpowered.     At   bottom   the   belief   which  makes  the 
Chinese   priest    turn   his    praying  machine,   the  belief   which 
makes  the  devotee  tell  her  beads,  the  belief  which  makes  the 
priest  thumb  his  breviary  or  say  salaried  masses  for  unknown 
peoples,  which  in  the  Midi  makes  rich  people  pay  beggars  to 
mumble  prayers  before  their  doors,  all  rest  upon  one  and  the 
same  principle  :  they  all  rest  on  a  faith  in  a  power  of  the  rite, 
of  the   traditional   formula  in   and    of  itself,   no  matter  who 
pronounces  it.     The  ef¥icacity  of  the  interested  prayers  does 
not  seem  to  depend   solely  on    the    legitimacy  of   what  one 
demands  but  on  the  form  employed  in  demanding  them  ;  and 
this  form  has  been  determined  at  bottom  by  experience  ;  the 
majority   of   devotees    perform    minute    experiments    on    the 
comparative    virtue  of    individual    prayers,  masses,    offerings, 
pilgrimages,  miraculous  waters,  etc. ;  they  amass  the  result  of 
their  observations  and  transmit  them  to  their  children.     The 
invocation    of    certain    privileged     Madonnas,   such    as    the 
Madonna  at    Lourdes,  is    even  to-day  a  vestige  of   primitive 
sorcery.     The  priest  inherits  all  these  naive  experiments  as  to 
tlie    conditions    appropriate    to    induce    a    miracle,    and    he 
systematizes    them.      Priests    being    men     picked     for    their 
capability  in   the   function  which   was  regarded  as   the  most 
useful  of  all  others  for  the  preservation  of  society,  necessarily 
came  to  constitute  a   really  superior  caste  and  to  be   person- 
ally in  some  sense  the  object  of  the  cult  which  they  adminis- 

nent  public  institution,  sacerdotal  sorcery  becomes  systematic,  develops  a  ritual 
which  becomes  traditional,  imposes  upon  those  who  aspire  to  the  honour  of  conduct- 
ing the  conditions  of  initiation,  proof  of  efficiency,  a  novitiate,  receives  privileges, 
defends  them  if  they  are  attacked,  endeavours  to  augment  them.  This  is  the  his- 
tory of  all  sacerdotal  institutions,  which  are  certainly  descended  from  a  ca]iricious, 
fantastic,  disorderly,  practice  of  sorcery  in  previous  ages." 


I2S      GENESIS  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE   SOCIETIES. 

tered.  The  perfect  type  of  sacerdotal  privilege  is  hereditary 
priesthood  as  it  existed  in  ancient  Judaism,  as  it  still  exists 
in  India;  every  Brahman  is  born  a  priest  and  needs  no 
special  education.  The  thirty-seven  great  priests  of  Vishnu 
in  Gujerat  are  honoured  even  to-day  as  the  visible  incarnation 
of  Vishnu.' 

Historically  the  priest  has  always  found  a  rival,  sometimes 

an  adversary,  in    the    prophet,    from    Buddha  to    Isaiah  and 

,  ,      .     ,       Jesus.     The  prophet  is  not  a  priest  bound  to  a 

Antagonism  be-     -^  r      r  r 

tween  priest  and  sanctuary  and  slave  to  a  tradition,  but  an 
prophet.  individual.     "  Prophecy,"  says  M.  Albert  Reville, 

"is  to  religion  what  lyrism  is  to  poetry."  The  prophet  and 
the  lyric  poet,  in  effect,  both  speak  in  the  name  of  their  own 
inspiration.  The  prophet  is  often  a  revolutionist,  the  priest 
is  essentially  a  conservative ;  the  one  represents  innovation, 
the  other  custom. 

Exterior  forms  of  worship  and  rites  allying  themselves  with 
refined  and  elevated  sentiments  have  in  all  religions  taken  on 

a  symbolic  and  expressive  character  that  they  did 
mentincult,  not  possess  in  the  practice  of  primitive  sorcery; 

they  have  become  aesthetic  and  by  that  fact 
rendered  durable.  For  whoever  looks  upon  the  most  ancient 
religious  ceremonies  with  the  eye  of  an  artist,  they  con- 
sist in  the  reproduction,  nowadays  too  mechanically  and 
unconsciously,  of  a  work  of  art  which  once  was  not  without  its 
significance  and  its  beauty.  They  are  nowadays  like  a  hand- 
organ  playing  admirable  compositions  by  some  old  master. 
Pfleiderer,  in  his  "  Philosophy  of  Religion,"  has  shown  that  the 
dominant  element  in  the  externals  of  worship  is  dramatic,  the 
dramatization  of  some  mythological  or  legendary  scenes.  It 
is  especially  among  the  Aryans  that  this  element  predomi- 

'  It  is  an  iionour  for  which  one  pays  dear  to  be  permitted  to  consecrate  to  them 
one's  soul,  one's  body,  or  the  soul  and  body  of  one's  wife.  One  pays  five  rupees 
for  the  privilege  of  contemplating  them,  twenty  for  the  privilege  of  touching  them, 
thirteen  for  the  privilege  of  being  whipped  by  them,  seventeen  for  the  privilege  of 
eating  betel  that  tliey  have  chewed,  nineteen  for  the  privilege  of  drinking  the 
water  in  which  they  have  bathed,  thirty-five  for  the  privilege  of  washing  their 
great  toes,  forty-two  for  the  privilege  of  rubbing  them  with  perfumed  oil,  and  from 
one  hundred  to  two  hundred  for  tasting  in  their  company  the  essence  of  delight. 


RELIGIOUS  MORALS.  129 

nates  ;  the  Aryans  are  especially  susceptible  to  the  charm  of 
great  epics  and  dramas.      The  Semites   are  lyric  rather,  and 
thence    arises    the    importance     of    prophecy    among    them  ; 
although  the   lyric  element  was  also  represented  among  the 
Greek  poets  and  Pythonesses.     The  dramatic  element,  on  the 
contrary,  is   visible  in  certain   symbolic  ceremonies   of  Chris- 
tianity   and    Judaism.     The    Mass    was    formerly   a    veritable 
drama  of  the  Passion  in  which  the  spectators  also  took  part ; 
the  half   pagan,   half   Christian   processions   that   still   subsist 
to-day  possess  for  the  crowd  something  of  the  attractiveness 
of   the    opera.     The  Communion    is  a  dramatization    of   the 
Lord's    Supper.     Catholicism    especially  is    distinguished   by 
the  possession  of  dramatic  and  sesthetic  (too  often  gross)  ele- 
ments, which    explain,   not    less   than    historical    reasons,    its 
victory  over  Protestantism   among  the    nations   of    southern 
Europe,  which  are  more  artistic  than  those  of  the  north,  and 
more  sensually  artistic.     The  aesthetic  superiority  of  a  religion 
is   not  to    be  disdained    by   the  thinker.     It  is   the  aesthetic 
element  in  every  rite  which,  as  we  shall  see,  is  its  most  re- 
spectable characteristic.      Moreover,  religious  sentiment  and 
aesthetic  sentiment  have  always  gone  hand  in  hand  ;  and  this 
union    has   been   one   of  the    most   important   factors    in   the 
development  of  the  aesthetic  sentiment  ;  it  is  thus  that  dramas 
and  epics   dealt   in   the   beginning   with   gods  and   demi-gods 
rather  than  with  men  ;   the  earliest   romances  were  religious 
legends;  the  first  odes  were  sacred  chants  and  songs.     Music 
and   religion   have   always  been    allied.     But   in   the  end,  the 
aesthetic  element  becomes  feeble  and  is  replaced,  as  religion 
loses  its  vitality,  by  a  species  of  mechanical  routine.     In  the 
East,  even  more  than  among  us,  this  phenomenon  is  manifest, 
the   whole  tendency  there  is  toward   monotonous  and   inter- 
minable ceremonials.     The  Parsees,  the  representatives  of  the 
oldest  existing  religion,  pass  six  hours  a  day  in  prayer.     And 
according  to   the  Indian  Mirror  the   following   is   a   descrip- 
tion   of   the    festival    of   the    Lord,    a    part    of    the    cult    of 
Brahmaism,     the     altogether     modern    and     wholly    deistical 
religion    founded     by    Ram  Mohun    Roy    and  Keshub  :    "At 
precisely  six  o'clock  a  hymn  was  intoned   in  chorus  in  the 


13°      GENESIS  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

upper  gallery  of  the  mandir  to  announce  the  day's  solemnity. 
Others  followed  to  the  accompaniment  of  the  harmonium,  and 
thus,  after  a  succession  of  hymns,  the  sacred  office  was  reached, 
which,  counting  in  the  sermon,  lasted  from  seven  to  ten  o'clock. 
A  part  of  the  congregation  then  retired  to  take  some  rest,  but 
those  who  remained  intoned  the  vedi  to  demand  of  the 
minister  explanations  in  regard  to  several  points  of  his  ser- 
mon. At  noon,  the  assembly  having  convened,  four  pundits 
came  out  successively  and  recited  Sanskrit  texts.  At  one 
o'clock  the  minister  gave  a  conference."  Then  came  the 
exposition  of  a  number  of  philosophical  and  religious  theses, 
delivered  by  their  respective  authors.  Hymns,  meditations,, 
and  prayers  in  common  lasted  till  nearly  seven  o'clock,  when 
the  initiation  of  seven  new  Brahmaists  was  celebrated.  This 
ceremony,  including  a  sermon,  lasted  not  less  than  two  hours, 
and  the  assembly,  which,  if  one  may  believe  the  reporter,  did 
not  show  any  sign  of  fatigue  after  these  fifteen  hours  of  con- 
tinuous devotion,  separated  with  a  hymn  to  the  effect  that  it 
had  not  yet  had  enough  :  "  The  heart  wishes  not  to  return 
home." 

IV.  Subjective  worship — Adoration  and  love. 

Subjective  worship  has  grown  out  of,  and  been  a  refinement 

upon,  the   external  cult,  which   in  the  beginning  was  in  the 

eyes  of  mankind  much  the  more  important  of  the 

ship  a^refiTement  t^^^-     To  the  incantation,  to  the  material  offering, 

on  public  and  ex-   to  the  sacrifices  of   the  victims  succeeded  subjec- 
ternal  worship.  .  ,      ,  ...  re     •  r   ^ 

tive  prayer  and  the  subjective  ottering  ot  love, 
and  the  subjective  sacrifice  of  egoistic  passion.  To  external 
homage,  to  evidences  of  fear  and  respect  by  which  one  was 
supposed  to  recognize  the  superior  power  of  the  gods,  as  one 
bows  down  in  recognition  of  the  superior  power  of  kings,  suc- 
ceeded a  mental  adoration,  in  which  a  god  is  recognized  as  all- 
powerful  but  also  as  all-beneficent.  The  mental  bowing  down  of 
the  entire  soul  before  God  is  the  last  refinement  of  ritual ;  and 
ritual  itself  in  the  higher  religions  comes  to  be  the  simple  sign 
and  symbol  of  this  adoration.'     Thus  the  primitive  sociomor- 

'  Among  the  Hindus,  Tapas,  that  is  to  say  fire,  the  ardour  of  devotion,  and  of 
voluntary  renouncement,  signified  in  the  beginning  simply  the  incantation  intended 


RELIGIOUS  MORALS.  131 

phic  character  of  the  cult  becomes  progressively  more  subtle  : 

the  semi-material  society,  consisting  of  gods  and  men,  becomes 

a  wholly  moral  society,  composed  of  men  and  the  principle  of 

goodness,  which  still  continues  to  be  represented  as  a  person, 

as  a  master,  as  a  father,  as  a  king. 

The  highest  form  of  subjective  worship  is  love  of  God,  in 

which  all  the  duties  of  religious  morality  may  be  regarded  as 

Th  1       fad  summed  up.     Adoration  contains  in  it  a  vitiating 

an  outlet  for  the    element  of  rcspect  for  power  ;  love  is  a  more  in- 
surplus  of  human    ^jj^^^^  ^^^^^^     /^j^g  j^^g  ^f  ^^^  jg  ^  p^j.^j^j  ^^^^j_ 

festation  of  the  need  to  love  which  exists  in  every 
human  being.  This  need  is  so  great  that  it  cannot  always  find 
satisfaction  in  real  life  ;  it  tends  therefore  to  stretch  beyond, 
and  not  finding  upon  earth  an  object  which  completely  suf^ces 
for  it,  it  seeks  one  in  heaven.  The  love  of  God  appears  thus 
to  be  an  expression  of  the  superabundance  of  the  love  of  man. 
Our  heart  sometimes  feels  too  big  for  the  world  and  seeks  to 
overpass  its  limits.  Let  us  not  forget,  for  the  rest,  that  the 
world  has  been  strangely  contracted  by  religious  ignorance, 
intolerance,  and  prejudice  ;  the  sphere  left  open  to  the  need 
of  loving  was  formerly  a  very  narrow  one  :  it  is  not  astonishing 
that  the  latter  should  have  stretched  out  its  arms  toward  a 
celestial  and  supernatural  being. 

The  same  thing  happens  when  human  affections  are  ship- 
wrecked in   us,  lose  their   object,  no  longer  find  anything  to 

which  they  can  attach  themselves.  In  France,  as 
isolation,  feeble-     ^'^  England  and  America,   the  habitual  devotion 

ness,  and misfor-     of  spinsters  has  long  since  been  observed,  though 
tune.  .         f  •       •  1  •   ,  ...  r 

It  often  comcides  with  a  certam  pmmg  away  or 
the  heart.  In  our  times  a  virtuous  unmarried  woman  is,  so  to 
speak,  predestined  to  devotion  ;  divine  love  is  for  her  (on  an 
average,  of  course)  a  necessary  compensation.  Remark  also 
that  old  men  are  generally  more  inclined  to  devotion  than 
young.  There  are.  no  doubt,  a  number  of  reasons  for  it:  the 
approach  of  death,  the  enfeeblement  of  the  body  and  of  the 

to  constrain  the  Devas  to  obedience,  and  to  deprive  them  of  a  part  of  their  power. 
Out  of  a  crude  concej^tion    has    grown  an    extremely  refined  one.      See  Manuel 
de  r Histoire  des  religions,  par  C.  P.  Tiele,  p.  19  (translated  by  Maurice  Vernes). 


132      G  EXE  SIS   OF  RELIGIOXS  IN  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

intelligence,  the  increasing  need  for  a  support,  etc.;  but 
there  exists  also  a  more  profound  reason.  The  old  man, 
always  more  isolated  than  the  young,  and  deprived  of  the 
excitations  of  the  sexual  instinct,  possesses  a  smaller  outlet 
for  his  instinct  for  affection  and  for  love.  Thus  there  accumu- 
lates in  him  an  amount  of  treasure  which  he  is  free  to  apply 
as  to  him  seems  best  ;  well,  the  service  of  God  is  that  which 
demands  least  effort,  which  is  most  appropriate  to  the 
natural  indolence  of  the  old,  to  their  preoccupation  with 
themselves ;  they  become  therefore  devotees,  partly  out  of 
egoism,  partly  out  of  a  need  for  some  disinterested  occupa- 
tion. A  grain  of  incense  burns  in  every  heart,  and  when  the 
perfume  of  it  can  no  longer  be  given  to  the  earth  we  let  it 
mount  to  heaven.  Note  also  that  the  loss  of  beloved  beings, 
misfortunes  of  every  sort,  and  irreparable  infirmities  all  provoke 
an  expansion  of  the  heart  toward  God.  In  the  Middle  Ages 
unhappiness  was  frequently  one  of  the  most  important  factors 
of  piety;  when  a  great  and  unmerited  misfortune  happened 
to  a  man,  the  chances  were  that  he  would  enter  the  Church  or 
else  become  an  atheist ;  it  depended  often  on  his  strength  of 
jTiind,  his  habits,  and  his  education.  When  one  strikes  an 
animal  it  is  equally  possible  that  it  may  bite  one  or  crouch 
at  one's  feet.  Every  time  the  heart  is  violently  bruised  there 
comes  an  inevitable  reaction  ;  we  must  reply  from  within  to 
the  blows  from  without,  and  this  reply  is  sometimes  revolt  and 
sometimes  adoration.  The  feeble,  the  disinherited,  the  suffer- 
ing, all  those  to  whom  misfortune  has  not  left  strength 
enough  for  rebellion,  have  but  one  resource  :  the  sweet  and 
consoling  humility  of  divine  love.  Whoever  does  not  love,  or 
is  not  loved  completely  and  sufficiently,  on  earth  will  always 
turn  toward  heaven :  the  proposition  is  as  regular  as  the 
parallelogram  of  forces. 

Just  as  we  have  seen  in  an  error  of  the  senses  one  of  the 

objective  principles  of  religious  physics,  so  perhaps  may  we 

p         ft-    ^^^    ^"    "^    perversion    of    love  one  of    the    most 

icism  a  perversion    essential  subjective  principles  of  mysticism.     It 

of  love.  .^    ^^   j^^^   ^^^^^    ^j^j^    unction,    this    penetrating 

sweetness  which  makes  the  mystic  tremble  to  the  marrow  of 


RELIGIOUS  MORALS.  1 33 

his  bones,  is  to  be  explained.  Profound  love,  e\en  the  most 
terrestrial,  tends  to  envelop  the  object  with  respect  and  ven- 
eration ;  an  effect  which  is  due  to  a  number  of  causes,  and 
among  others  to  the  psychological  law  according  to  which 
desire  magnifies  the  desired  object.  To  love  is  always  a  little 
to  adore.  If  it  is  a  human  being  that  is  the  object  of  the 
love,  the  divinization  incidental  to  it  will  be  confined  within 
certain  limits,  but  if  the  love  stretch  up  from  the  earth  into 
heaven,  it  may  command  the  full  powers  of  the  imagination  ; 
the  soul,  seeking  at  a  distance  for  some  vague  object  to  which 
to  attach  itself,  will  go  out  in  mystic  outbursts  of  emotion 
and  ecstasy.  The  soul  will  personify  its  ideal,  will  supply  it 
with  figure  and  speech  :  its  ideal  will  be  Jesus  with  Mary 
Magdalene  at  his  feet,  or  the  Virgin  weeping  at  the  foot  of 
the  cross,  or  Moses  in  the  midst  of  the  clouds,  or  the  child 
Buddha  before  whom  the  statues  of  the  gods  rose  and  made 
obeisance.  Thus  mystical  religions  are  formed  of  great 
images  and  passionate  sentiments  and  the  heart  of  man,  the 
very  life  blood  of  which  they  turn  to  their  profit.  What 
appears  often  to  be  the  most  intellectual  of  tastes  is  only  love 
in  disguise.  The  most  earthly  love  is  often  a  religion  in  its 
earliest  stages.  Henri  Beyle,  visiting  the  salt-mines  at 
Salzburg,  found  in  a  shaft  a  branch  covered  with  incomparable 
diamonds  scintillating  in  the  light.  It  was  a  dead  timber  on 
which  the  salt  had  crystallized;  in  the  timber  thus  trans- 
formed Beyle  saw  the  symbol  of  what  happens  in  every  loving 
heart  ;  every  object  one  finds  there  has  taken  on  an  extraordi- 
nary brilliancy,  a  marvellous  beauty.  He  calls  this  phe- 
nomenon crystallization  ;  we  should  prefer  to  call  it  divinization. 
Love  always  divinizes  its  object  ;  partially  and  provisionally 
when  this  object  is  placed  upon  earth  and  close  to  one's  eyes, 
but  definitively  when  this  object  is  lost  in  the  distance  of 
heaven.  Our  gods  are  like  those  mysterious  beings  who 
spring,  in  legend,  from  a  drop  of  generous  blood  or  a  loving 
tear  let  fall  upon  the  earth  ;  it  is  with  our  own  substance  that 
we  nourish  them  ;  their  beauty,  their  goodness  come  out  of 
our  love,  and  if  we  love  them  as  we  do,  the  reason  is  that  we 
must  love  something;  must  lift  up  to  the  four  corners  of  the 


134      GENESIS  OF  KELIGIOXS  IN  PRIMITIVE    SOCIETIES. 

horizon,  even  if  they  be  deaf,  a  supreme  appeal.  This  out- 
come of  love  and  religious  sentiment  is  most  visible  in  exalted 
minds,  both  in  the  Middle  Ages  and  in  our  own  days.  The 
true  element  of  originality  in  Christian  literature  is  that  one 
there  finds,  for  the  first  time,  a  sincere  and  warm  accent  of 
love,  scarcely  divined,  here  and  there,  by  the  great  spirits 
of  antiquity,  by  Sappho  and  Lucretius.  In  a  page  of  St. 
Augustine  one  finds  the  expression  of  a  franker  and  more 
profound  ardour  than  in  all  the  elegant  affectations  of  Horace 
or  the  languors  of  Tibullus.  Nothing  in  pagan  antiquity  is 
comparable  to  the  chapter  in  the  "  Imitation"  on  love.  The 
passion,  confined  and  held  in  check,  mounts  to  heights  till 
then  unknown,  like  a  dammed  river  ;  but  it  is  no  less  genu- 
inely itself.  What  shall  we  say  of  the  visionary  mystics  of 
the  people  like  St.  Theresa,  and  Chantal,  and  Guyon? 
Among  them  piety,  in  its  most  exaggerated  form,  verges  upon 
the  madness  of  love.  St.  Theresa  might  have  been  a 
courtesan  of  genius  equally  as  well  as  a  saint.  Physiologists 
and  physicians  have  often  observed,  in  our  days,  analogous 
pathological  cases,  in  which  the  religious  effusion  is  simply,  so 
to  speak,  a  case  of  mistake  in  identity.' 

In  Christianity  the  conception  of  Jesus,  the  beautiful,  gentle 

young  man,  the  Holy  Spirit  incarnate  in  the  purest  and  most 

ideal  form,  favours  more  directly  than  any  corre- 

Worship  of  .  .  .....  ,  . 

Christ  to  a  con-  spondmg  conception  m  any  rival  religion  this 
siderable  extent  a    particular  perversion  of  love.     Christianity  is  the 

perversion  of  love.    '^  '■ 

most  anthropomorphic  belief  in  existence,  for  it 
is  the  one  of  all  others  which,  after  having  conceived  the  most 
elevated  idea  of  God,  abases  it,  without  degrading  it,  to  the  most 
human  of  human  conditions.  By  a  much  more  refined,  much 
more  profound  paganism  than  the  paganism  of  antiquity, 
the  Christian  religion  has  succeeded  in  making  God  the  object 
of  an  ardent  love,  without  ceasing  to  make  Him  an  object  of 
respect.  By  a  myth  much  more  seductive  and  poetic  even  than 
that  of  Psyche,  we  see  God,  the  true  God,  descended  upon  earth 
in  the  form  of  a  blond  and  smiling  young  man;  we  hear  him 
speak  low  in  the  ear  of  Mary  Magdalene  at  the  fall  of  evening; 

'  Ribot,  de  rHMditt',  364  ;  Moreau  de  Tours,  Psych,  morbide,  259. 


RELIGIOUS  MORALS.  135 

and  then  this  vision  suddenly  disappears  and  we  see  in  the 
gathering  shadow  two  mutilated  arms  extended  toward  us, 
and  a  heart  which  bleeds  for  humanity.  In  this  legend  all  the 
powers  of  the  imagination  are  called  in  play,  all  the  fibres  of 
the  heart  are  moved  ;  it  is  an  accomplished  work  of  art.  What 
is  there  astonishing  in  the  fact  that  Christ  has  been  and  is  still 
the  great  seducer  of  souls  ?  In  the  ears  of  a  young  girl  his 
name  appeals  at  once  to  all  her  instincts,  even  to  the  maternal 
instinct,  for  Jesus  is  often  represented  as  a  child  with  the 
dimpled,  rosy  cheeks  which  the  Greeks  ascribed  to  Eros.  The 
heart  of  the  woman  is  thus  besieged  on  all  sides  at  once  :  her 
waverine  and  timid  imagination  wanders  from  the  cherub  to 
the  youth,  and  from  the  youth  to  the  pale  figure,  with  the 
bowed  head,  upon  the  cross.  It  is  possible  that  from  the  birth 
of  Christianity  down  to  the  present  day  there  has  not  been 
one  single  woman  of  an  exalted  piety  whose  heart  has  not  first 
beat  for  her  God,  for  Jesus,  for  the  most  lovable  and  loving 
type  that  the  human  mind  has  ever  conceived. 

Side  by  side  with  its  somewhat  sentimental  element  the 
love  of  God  contains  a  moral  element,  which  is  progressively 
detaching  itself  with  the  march  of  ideas.  God 
inSwrGod,  being  the  very  principle  of  goodness,  the  per- 
Bonification  of  the  moral  ideal,  the  love  of  God 
ultimately  becomes  a  moral  love  properly  so  called,  the  love  of 
virtue,  of  sanctity  at  its  height.  The  subjective  act  of  charity 
thus  becomes  the  religious  act  par  excellence,  in  which 
morality  and  subjective  worship  are  identified  ;  good  works 
and  the  externals  of  worship  are  simply  a  translation  into  the 
outer  world  of  the  moral  consciousness.  At  the  same  time,  in 
the  highest  speculations  of  philosophic  theology,  charity  has 
been  conceived  as  embracing  simultaneously  all  beings  in  the 
divine  love,  and  by  consequence  as  beginning  to  realize  the 
sort  of  perfect  society  in  which  "  all  exist  in  all  and  all  in  every 
part.'"  The  social  and  moral  character  of  religion  thus  attains 
its  highest  degree  of  perfection  and  God  appears  as  a  sort  of 
mystic  realization  of  the  universal  society,  sub  specie  ceterm. 


part  Secon^. 

THE  DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING 

SOCIETIES. 

CHAPTER  I. 

DOGMATIC    FAITH, 

I.  Narrow  dogmatic  faith — The  credulity  of  primitive  man  : 
First,  spontaneous  faith  in  the  senses  and  imagination  ;  Second, 
faith  in  the  testimony  of  superior  men ;  Third,  faith  in  the 
divine  word,  in  revelation,  and  in  the  sacred  texts — The  literal- 
ness  of  dogmatic  faith — Inevitable  intolerance  of  narrow  dog- 
matic faith — Belief  in  dogma,  revelation,  salvation,  and  damnation 
all  result  in  intolerance — Modern  tolerance. 

II.  Broad  dogmatic  faith — Orthodox  Protestantism — Dogmas  of 
orthodox  Protestantism — Rational  consequences  of  these  dog- 
mas— Logical  failure  of  orthodox  Protestantism. 

III.  The  dissolution  of  dogmatic  faith  in  modern  society — 
Reasons  that  render  this  dissolution  inevitable — Comparative 
influence  of  the  various  sciences;  influence  of  public  instruction, 
of  means  of  communication,  of  industry  even  and  of  commerce, 
etc. — The  disappearance  of  belief  in  oracles  and  prophecies — 
Gradual  disappearance  of  the  belief  in  miracles,  in  devils,  etc. 

/.  Narroiv  dogviatic  faitJi. 

If  faith  has  not  varied  especially  in  and  of  itself  as  a  mode 
of  feeling,  the  objects  with  which  it  is  concerned  have  differed 
from  generation  to  generation.  Hence  the  various  forms 
of  doctrine  which  we  shall  pass  in  review  as  showing  the  evolu- 
tion and  dissolution  of  faith. 

In  primitive   religions,  faith    was   altogether   experimental 
and  physical ;  it  was  not  opposed  to  scientific  belief,  which,  to 
Primitive  faith    ^^^  ^^''^  truth,  did  not  exist.     It  was  a  credulity 
more  properly  a      rather  than  a   faith;    and   religious  faith,  in   our 
"^'^^^'  day,  is  still  a  credulity,  an  obligatory  credulity, 

primarily  in   the  authority   of    superior   men,  secondarily  in 
that  of  God  himself. 

136 


DOGMATIC  FAITH.  137 

The  origin  of  religious  faith   has  been  attributed  solely  to 

an  appetite  for  the  marvellous  and  the  extraordinary  ;  but  we 

„  ,   ,.     .     ,  have  already  shown  that  religions  do  everything 
Subordination  of  •'  ..... 

the  marvellous  in  in  their  power  to  regulate  the  imagination  even  \w 

primitive  faith.  ^j^^  ^,^^^,  ^^^  ^f  Stimulating  it,  and  to  bring  the 

unknown  to  the  touchstone  of  the  known.  The  marvellous 
must  aid  in  making  something  at  least  apparently  comprehen- 
sible ;  with  marvel  for  marvel's  sake  religion  holds  no  com- 
merce. So  much  so,  that  primitive  people  have  sought  in 
religion,  less  to  multiply  the  marvellous,  in  the  modern  sense 
of  the  word,  than  partially  to  suppress  it  ;  they  have  been  in 
search  of  an  e.xplanation  of  some  sort.  An  explanation  by 
superior  powers,  by  spirits,  by  occult  virtues,  seemed  clearer 
to  them  than  an  explanation  by  scientific  law. 

For  the  rest,  any  explanation   once  given,   primitive  man 

never  dreamed  of  disputing  it,  he  was  essentially  a  "  man  of 

faith."     The  delicate  shades  of  thought  we  desig- 

Rationale  of  .....        ,  ii-i-^  •lm"*. 

primitive  man's  nate  as  verisimilitude,  probability,  possibility, were 
faith  in  the  mar-  ^g  little  known  to  primitive  man  as  to  children. 
The  voluntary  suspension  of  judgment  that  we  call 
doubt  indicates  an  extremely  advanced  state  of  mind.  With 
children  and  savages,  to  conceive  and  to  believe  are  one  ;  they 
know  nothing  about  reserving  their  approbation,  or  mistrusting 
their  own  intelligence  or  that  of  others.  A  certain  humility, 
which  young  minds  do  not  possess,  is  necessary  before  one  can 
say:  That  may  be  true  but  also  it  may  not,  or  in  other  words, 
I  don't  know.  And  also  one  must  have  patience  to  verify 
with  care  what  one  believes,  and  patience  is  courage  of  the 
most  difificult  kind.  Finally,  man  always  feels  the  need  to 
declare  that  what  is  attractive,  what  satisfies  his  mind,  is  real: 
when  one  tells  an  interesting  story  to  a  child,  he  says,  "  It  is 
true,  is  it  not?"  If,  on  the  contrary,  it  is  a  sad  story  he  will 
cry  out :  "  That  is  not  true  I  "  A  man  of  the  people  to  whom 
one  should  demonstrate,  with  the  evidence  in  one's  hand,  that  a 
thing  he  thought  true  was  false,  would  reply  with  a  shake  of  the 
head,  "  If  it  is  not  true,  it  ought  to  be."  All  primitive  people 
were  like  that.  In  a  memorandum  on  The  Development 
of  Language  and  Intelligence  among  Children,  E.  Egger  char- 


138      DISSOLUTIOX  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

acterized  this  state  of  mind  as  "  rebellion  against  the  notion 
of  doubt  and  even  that  of  simple  probability."  Felix,  a  child 
of  five  and  one-half  years,  took  a  lively  interest  in  sacred  history, 
but  he  could  not  understand  why  all  the  lacunae  had  not  been 
filled  in,  or  why  doubtful  points  should  be  marked  as  such. 
"  The  actual  state  of  his  mind,"  adds  E.  Egger,  "corresponds 
in  a  manner  to  that  of  the  Greek  mind  during  the  period 
when  the  effort  was  made  painfully  to  set  in  order  the 
chaos  of  ancient  legend."  Two  years  later  the  same  child  ' 
received  a  present  of  a  collection  of  stories.  He  found  in  the 
preface  that  the  author  gave  the  stories  out  as  true ;  he  asked 
nothing  further,  and  was  promptly  astonished  to  find  anybody 
else  in  doubt.  "  His  trustfulness  displayed  no  disposition  to 
go  behind  the  letter  of  his  text,  in  especial  as  the  stories 
sounded  to  him  sufficiently  probable."  In  my  own  experience 
with  children,  I  have  noticed  that  nothing  irritates  them  like 
uncertainty;  a  thing  must  be  true  or  false,  and  generally  they 
prefer  that  it  should  be  true.  For  the  rest,  a  child  does  not 
know  the  limits  of  his  own  power,  and  still  less  that  of  others ; 
and  too,  he  has  no  clear  sense  of  the  marvellous  and  the 
improbable.  A  child  saw  a  horse  galloping  by  one  day,  and 
said  to  me  seriously,  "  I  could  run  as  fast  as  that."  Thus 
again  the  little  peasant  girl,  of  whom  we  spoke  above,  asked 
her  mistress  why  she  might  not  have  made  the  flowers  in  the 
garden.  A  sense  of  the  possible  is  lacking  in  primitive  intelli- 
gences :  because  you  seem  to  a  child  or  a  savage  to  be  able  to 
do  more  things  than  he,  he  readily  comes  to  believe  that  you 
can  do  everything;  so  that  what  we  call  miracles  seem  to 
primitive  people  simply  the  visible  and  necessary  sign  of 
superior  power;  so  much  so,  indeed,  that  to  them  a  man  of 
mark  ought  to  be  able  to  perform  miracles ;  they  expect 
them  from  him  as  their  due,  and  become  indignant  if  they  are 
not  forthcoming,  as  a  child  is  indignant  when  one  does  not 
help  him  carry  a  burden  that  is  too  heavy  for  his  strength. 
The  Hebrews  precisely  expected  Moses  to  perform  miracles 
and,  so  to  speak,  obliged  him  to  do  them.  The  people  believe 
in  their  great  men.  and  the  belief  in  miracles  is  but  a  corollary 
from  their  general  confidence. 


V^'  OF  THfi        ^>' 

DOGMATIC  FAITH.  ^  v  ■i^JnoJ.-i.      j^q 

Moreover,  faith  reaches  a  height  among  primilwe^TTationa 

that    it    never    does   among    cultivated    intelligences :    they 

believe    immeasurably    things  that   it   is  out    of 

Absoluteness  of      jj   ^^^.^sure    to  believe  at    all;  the    happy  inter 
primitive  faith.  i  r  y 

utriunque  is  as  lacking   in  the  belief  itself  as  in 

the  thing  believed.  Mr.  Spencer,  in  his  "  Sociology,"  cites  the 
example  of  a  young  woman  who  attributed  to  a  certain  amulet 
the  magical  virtue  of  preserving  her  against  injuries.  She 
thought  herself  as  invulnerable  as  Achilles.  The  chief  of  the 
tribe,  astonished  that  so  precious  an  amulet  should  exist,  and 
wishing  no  doubt  to  acquire  it,  asked  to  have  its  virtues  veri- 
fied before  his  eyes.  The  woman  was  brought  to  him,  a 
warrior  prepared  his  hatchet,  and  in  perfect  confidence  she 
put  out  her  arm.  The  blow  fell  and  the  woman  uttered  a  cry 
of  astonishment  not  less  than  of  pain  as  her  hand  fell  to  the 
ground.  Who  in  our  day  has  such  absolute  faith  ?  Very  few 
amone  us  would  risk  his  life,  or  even  his  hand,  to  maintain 
such  and  such  a  dogma.  This  woman  belonged  to  the  race  of 
martyrs  ;  her  intense  credulity  bordered  on  heroism. 

Man's  natural  confidence  in  his  fellow-men,  especially  when 
there  is  no  very  evident  reason  why  the  latter  should  mislead 

„    .   .     ,  .      him,  is  the  origin  of  the  credence  we  give  to  the 
Confusion  of  sin-  '  ^  _  °  . 

cerity  with  verity  testimony  and  authority  of  those  who  claim  to 
by  primitive  man.  be  inspired ;  which  all  seemed  very  human  and 
natural  in  the  beginning,  and  only  later  came  to  be  regarded 
as  supernatural.  This  spontaneous  disposition  to  believe 
is  an  elementary  instinct  which  plays  a  large  role  in  re- 
ligious sociomorphism.  Suspicious  as  primitive  man  is  when 
his  material  interests  are  at  stake,  in  all  other  matters  he 
is  apt  to  be  credulous  to  a  fault.  Moreover,  he  scarcely 
knows  what  one  means  by  error,  and  does  not  distinguish  it 
from  deception  ;  he  puts  trust  in  his  own  judgment  and  in  that 
of  other  people.  When  you  te.l  him  something  extraordinary, 
his  first  thought  is  that  you  are  making  sport  of  him  ;  he  is 
less  inclined  to  believe  that  you  have  deceived  yourself,  that 
you  have  reasoned  falsely;  sincerity  and  verity  are  confused 
in  his  mind.  It  has  taken  all  the  experience  of  modern  life  to 
make  clear  to  us  the  difference  between  these   two  things  :   to 


MO      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

induce  us  to  verify  tlie  affirmations  even  of  those  wliose 
characters  we  esteem  most  highly  ;  to  contradict,  without 
offending,  those  who  are  dearest  to  us.  Primitive  man  never 
distinguished  his  belief  in  the  "law"  from  his  faith  in  the 
"  prophets."  Those  whom  he  esteemed  and  admired  seemed 
to  him  of  necessity  to  know  the  facts.  Add  that  man  is 
always  inclined  to  make  much  of  anything  that  is  a  material 
fact,  of  anything  that  appeals  to  his  eyes  and  to  his  ears. 
The  sacred  word,  and  the  sacred  writings  that  embody  it,  are 
to  him  not  merely  indications,  hut  proof s  of  what  they  affirm. 
I  overheard  it  given  in  a  church  one  day  as  an  incontestable 
proof  that  Moses  conversed  with  the  Lord  that  Mt.  Sinai  is 
still  in  existence;  that  is  the  sort  of  argument  that  is  success- 
ful with  the  people.  Livingstone  says  that  the  negroes 
listened  and  believed  from  the  moment  he  showed  them  the 
Bible  and  told  them  that  the  celestial  Father  had  written  His 
will  on  the  pages  of  that  book  ;  they  touched  the  pages  and 
believed  at  once. 

In   effect,  blind   confidence    in  a   word,  in  a  sign — precipi- 
tate   induction   from    which    one  infers    from    the  reality  of 
the  sign  to  the  reality  of  the  thing  signified  :  a 

Inference  from  °  -'  o       o 

reality  of  the  sign  second  induction  to  the  effect  that  any  doctrine 
Si;;1i?nldt\e  relatively  elevated,  from  the  social  and  moral 
essence  of  faith  point  of  view,  and  put  forth  by  men  one  respects, 
in  revelation.  .^  probably  true,  even  if  it  be  in  many  points 
irrational — these  are  the  principal  elements  of  the  primitive  faith 
in  revelation.  And  this  faith,  in  all  its  crudity,  exists  at  the 
present  day.  It  wins  its  way  through  the  eyes  and  ears  ;  therein 
lies  its  power.  It  is  much  less  mystical  than  we  are  inclined  to 
fancy;  it  is  incarnate  in  its  monuments,  its  temples,  its  books  ;  it 
walks  about  and  breathes  in  the  person  of  its  priests,  its  saints,  its 
gods;  we  cannot  look  about  us  without  realizing  its  existence 
^n  one  form  or  another.  It  has  been  of  great  service  to 
human  thought,  in  spite  of  its  pitfalls,  thus  to  have  been  able 
to  express  itself,  to  fashion  objects  in  its  own  image,  to  pene- 
trate  marble  and  stone,  to  provide  that  it  shall  itself  be  borne 
back  in  upon  us  from  without.  How  can  one  doubt  what  is 
visible  and  tangible  ? 


DOGMATIC  FAITH.  141 

Faith  in  testimony  and  authority  leads  to  faith  in   sacred 

texts  and  in  the  very  letter  of  these  texts.     This  is  what  one 

means  by  literal  faith.     It  exists  still  in  our  day, 
Results  m  ..... 

"credo  quia  among  many  civilized  people.     It  constitutes  the 

ineptum."  basis  of  the  Catholicism  of  the  masses.     "In  order 

to  silence  restless  spirits,"  said  the  council  of  Trent,  "  it  is 
decreed  that  no  one  may,  in  the  interpretation  of  the 
Scriptures,  .  .  .  deviate  from  the  construction  sanctioned  by 
the  Church,  to  seek  for  a  supposedly  more  exact  rendering." 
Faith  lies  thus  in  a  renunciation  of  thought,  an  abdication  of 
liberty;  imposes  upon  itself  a  rule  not  of  logic  but  of  morals, 
and  subjects  itself  to  dogmas  as  to  immutable  principles.  It 
restricts  intelligence  beforehand  to  precise  limits,  and  imposes 
a  p-eneral  direction  on  it,  with  instructions  not  to  swerve 
from  it.  It  is  at  this  point  that  faith  comes  really  to  be 
opposed  to  scientific  belief  for  which  in  the  beginning  it  was 
a  substitute.  According  to  the  council  of  the  Vatican,  those 
who  have  faith  do  not  believe  "  because  of  the  intrinsic  truth 
of  the  things  revealed,"  but  "  because  of  the  divine  authority 
that  revealed  them."  If  you  reason  with  a  person  of  that 
stamp,  he  will  listen,  understand,  and  follow  you — but  only  to 
a  certain  point ;  there  he  stops,  and  nothing  in  the  world  can 
make  him  go  beyond.  Or  rather  from  that  point  he  v/ill 
declare  himself  inexpugnable,  and  will  assure  you  that  you  have 
absolutely  no  hold  on  him  ;  and  in  effect,  no  scientific  or  phil- 
osophical reason  could  turn  him  from  his  belief,  since  he  places 
the  object  of  his  faith  in  a  sphere  superior  to  reason,  and 
makes  his  faith  an  affair  of  "  conscience."  Nothing  can  force 
a  man  to  think  rightly  when  he  does  not  propose  rectitude 
of  thought  to  himself  as  a  supreme  aim,  and  nothing  can 
obliee  him  to  follow  the  dictates  of  reason  to  the  bitter  end,  if 
he  believes  that  the  instant  he  calls  certain  dogmas  and  certain 
authorities  in  question  he  is  committing  a  sin.  Thus,  faith 
gives  a  certain  sacred  and  inviolable  character  to  what  it 
sanctions, — converts  it  into  a  sacred  ark  that  one  may  not  touch 
without  sacrilege  or  danger,  neither  may  one  look  at  it  too 
closely  nor  touch  it  with  one's  fingers,  even  to  lend  it  support 
now  and  then  when  it  seems  ready  to  fall.     Free-thought  and 


14^      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IX  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

science  never  consider  a  thing  as  true  except  provisionally,  and 
so  long  as  it  is  not  seriously  doubted  by  someone.  Dogmatic 
faith,  on  the  contrary,  affirms  as  true  not  only  the  things  that 
are  uncontested,  but  those  which,  according  to  it,  are  conclu- 
sively presumed,  and  therefore  above  discussion.  It  follows 
that,  if  reasons  for  belief  diminish,  faith  must  be  none  the  less 
strong.  It  was  this  that  Pascal  endeavoured  to  demonstrate. 
In  effect,  the  less  a  belief  seems  rational  to  our  finite  minds, 
the  more  merit  there  is  in  lending  credence  to  "  divine 
authority."  It  would  be  too  simple  to  believe  no  more  than 
what  one  sees  or  what  sounds  probable  to  one  ;  to  affirm  the 
improbable,  to  believe  in  what  seems  incredible,  is  much  more 
meritorious.  Our  courage  rises  in  proportion  as  our  intelli- 
gence becomes  humble  ;  the  more  absurd  one  is  the  greater 
one  is — credo  quia  ineptuvi ;  the  more  difficult  the  task,  the 
greater  the  merit.  The  strength  of  our  faith  is  estimated,  in 
the  mysticism  of  Pascal,  by  the  weakness  of  its  "  reasons." 
The  ideal,  on  this  theory,  would  be  to  possess  no  more  than 
the  metaphysical  minimum  of  reason  for  belief,  the  weakest 
conceivable  of  motives,  a  mere  nothing;  that  is  to  say,  one 
should  be  attached  to  the  supreme  object  of  one's  faith  by  the 
slenderest  of  bonds.  The  Albigensian  priests,  the  parfaits, 
wear  a  simple  white  cord  around  their  waists  as  an  emblem  of 
their  vow;  all  mankind  wears  this  cord,  and  it  is  in  reality 
more  solid  and  often  heavier  than  any  chain. 

Scepticism  tends  toward  a  complete  intellectual  indifference 
w^ith  regard  to  all  things ;  dogmatic  faith  produces  a  partial 

indifference,  an  indifference  limited  to  certain 
telleaua^l  rest"  points,  determined  once  for  all  ;  it  is  no  longer 
incident  to  anxious  on  these  heads,  but  rests  and  delights  in 

established  dogma.  The  sceptic  and  the  man  of 
faith  abandon  themselves  thus  to  a  more  or  less  extensive 
abstinence  from  thought.  Religious  faith  is  a  determination 
to  suspend  the  flight  of  the  imagination,  to  limit  the  sphere  of 
thought.  We  all  know  the  Oriental  legend  that  the  world  is 
held  up  by  an  elephant,  which  stands  on  a  tortoise,  which  floats 
on  a  sea  of  milk.  The  believer  must  always  refrain  from  ask- 
ing what  supports  the  sea  of  milk  ?     He  must  never  notice  a 


DOGMATIC  FAITH.  143 

point  of  which  there  is  no  explanation;  he  must  constantly 
repeat  to  himself  the  abortive  incomplete  idea  that  has 
been  given  him  without  daring  to  recognize  that  it  is 
incomplete.  In  a  street  through  which  I  pass  every  day,  a 
blackbird  whistles  the  same  melodic  phrase ;  the  phrase  is 
incomplete,  ends  abruptly,  and  for  years  I  have  heard  him  lift 
his  voice,  deliver  himself  of  his  truncated  song,  and  stop  with 
a  satisfied  air,  with  no  need  to  complete  his  musical  fragment, 
which  I  never  hear  without  a  feeling  of  impatience.  It  is  thus 
with  the  true  believer ;  accustomed  as  he  is  in  the  most 
important  questions  to  dwell  within  the  limits  of  the  custom- 
ary, without  any  curiosity  about  the  beyond,  he  sings  his 
monotonous  little  note  without  dreaming  that  it  lacks  any- 
thing— that  his  phrase  is  as  clipped  as  his  wings  are,  and  that 
the  narrow  world  of  his  belief  is  not  the  universe. 

The  people  who  still  hold  to  this  kind  of  faith  represent  the 

antique  world    endeavouring    to    perpetuate    itself  without   a 

compromise  in  the  bosom  of  the  new  world,  the 

Wilful  blindness  ^^q^Jj^  q{  modern  society.     The  barbarian  does  not 

of  faith,  •'  f    .  1 

wish   to   yield   to   the   progress  of    ideas  and    of 

manners  ;  if  such  people  formed  the  majority  of  the  nation 
they  would  constitute  the  greatest  danger  to  human  reason, 
to  science,  and  to  truth.  Literal  faith,  in  effect,  makes  naked 
truth  a  subject  of  pudicity;  one  does  not  dare  to  look  it  in  the 
face  or  lift  the  sacred  veil  that  hides  its  beauty  ;  you  find  your- 
self in  the  midst  of  a  conspiracy,  mysterious  beings  surround 
you,  putting  their  hands  before  your  eyes  and  a  finger  on  your 
lips.  Dogma  holds  you,  possesses  you,  masters  you  in  spite 
of  yourself  ;  it  is  fixed  in  your  heart  and  petrified  in  your 
intelligence  :  it  is  not  without  reason  that  faith  has  been  com- 
pared to  an  anchor  that  has  caught  on  the  bottom  and  checked 
the  vessel  in  its  course,  while  the  open  and  free  ocean  stretches 
beyond  as  far  as  the  eye  can  reach.  And  who  shall  break  the 
anchor  from  his  heart  ?  When  you  shake  it  loose  in  one 
place,  faith  settles  to  its  hold  somewhere  else  ;  you  have  a 
thousand  weak  points  at  which  it  attacks  you.  You  can  com- 
pletely abandon  a  philosophical  doctrine ;  but  you  cannot 
break  away  absolutely  from   a  collection   of  beliefs  in  which 


144      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIOXS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

blind  and  literal  faith  has  borne  sway  ;  there  is  always  some- 
thing left ;  you  will  carry  the  scars  and  marks  from  it  as  slaves 
who  are  freed  still  carry  on  their  flesh  the  signs  of  their  servi- 
tude. You  are  branded  in  the  heart,  you  shall  feel  the  effects 
of  it  always  ;  you  shall  have  moments  of  dread  and  shudder- 
ing, of  mystic  enthusiasm,  of  distrust  of  reason,  of  need  to 
represent  things  as  being  other  than  they  really  are,  to  see 
what  is  not,  and  not  to  see  what  is.  The  fiction  that  was 
early  forced  upon  your  soul  shall  often  seem  to  you  sweeter 
than  the  sound  and  rugged  truth,  you  need  to  know ;  you 
shall  hate  yourself  for  the  sin  of  knowledge. 

There  is  a  story  of  a  Brahman  who  was  talking  with  a  Euro- 
pean of  his  religion,  and  among  other  dogmas  mentioned  the 
scrupulous  respect  due  to  animals.     "  The  law," 
Intolerance         ^^j^  j^^     u  ^^^  ^j^j     forbids  one's  doing  evil,  vol- 

incident  to  faith,  '  -^  fa  ' 

untarily,  to  the  smallest  creature  even  for  the 
purpose  of  supplying  one's  self  with  food,  it  even  bids  one  walk 
with  extraordinary  circumspection  with  one's  eyes  down,  that 
one  may  avoid  stepping  on  the  humblest  ant."  Without  trying 
to  refute  this  naive  faith  the  European  handed  the  speaker  a 
microscope.  The  Brahman  looked  through  the  instrument  and 
saw  on  everything  about  him,  on  the  fruits  that  he  was 
about  to  eat,  in  the  beverage  that  he  was  about  to  drink, 
everywhere  that  he  might  put  his  hand  or  foot,  the  move- 
ment of  a  multitude  of  little  animals  of  whose  existence  he 
had  never  dreamed  ;  creatures  that  he  had  totally  left  out  of 
account.  He  was  stupefied  and  handed  the  microscope  back 
to  the  European.  "  I  give  it  to  you,"  the  latter  said.  The 
Brahman  with  a  movement  of  joy  took  it  and  threw  it  on  the 
ground,  and  broke  it,  and  departed  satisfied ;  as  if  by  that 
stroke  he  had  destroyed  the  truth  and  saved  his  faith. 
Happily,  in  our  day,  one  may  without  great  loss  destroy  an 
optical  or  physical  instrument,  it  can  be  replaced  ;  but  what  is 
to  become  of  an  intelligence  in  the  hands  of  the  fanatical 
believer?  Would  he  not  crush  it,  in  case  of  need,  as  the  instru- 
ment of  glass  was  crushed,  and  sacrifice  it  the  more  gaily 
that  a  more  limpid  gleam  of  truth  might  well  filter  through 


DOGMATIC  FAITH.  145 

it?  In  India  we  have  an  example  of  the  philosophical  doc- 
trine, very  inoffensive  in  appearance  and  upheld,  with  various 
modifications,  by  great  thinkers,  of  the  transmigration  of 
souls,  becoming  a  religious  dogma,  producing  as  a  direct 
result  intolerance,  contempt  of  science,  and  all  the  usual 
effects  of  blind  dogmatism.  Dogmatic  and  absolute  faith  in 
its  every  form  t'ends  to  check  thought  ;  thence  springs  its 
intolerance — a  consequence  that  may  well  be  insisted  on. 

Intolerance  is  only  an  outward  realization  of  the  tyranny 
exercised   within  by  dogmatic  faith.     Belief  in  a  revelation, 

which  all  religion  rests  upon,  is  the  very  opposite 
And  even  logic-  °  ^  a- 

aUyresulting         of  progressive  discovery;  the  instant  one  affirms 

^°°'^*'  that  the  first  exists,  the   latter  becomes  useless, 

dangerous,  and  ends  in  being  condemned.     Intolerance,  first 
theoretic,  then  practical,  is  the  legitimate  offspring  of  absolute 
faith   of   every  kind.     In    all   revealed    religion    doctrine   first 
appears   in   the   form    of  dogma,  then   of   dogmatic   and   cate- 
gorical commandment.     There  have  always  been  things  that 
must  be  believed,  and  practices  that  must  be  observed,  under 
pain   of   perdition.     The   sphere   of   dogmas   and  sacred   rites 
may  be  widened  or  narrowed,  the  discipline  may  be   loose  or 
so  strict  that  it  extends  to  the  very  items  of  one's  diet;  but 
there  is  always  at  least  a  minimum  of  dogma  that  is  absolute 
and   of  practice  that  is  rigidly  obligator}-,  without  which  no 
truly    religious    church    could    exist.      And    this    is    not    all. 
Theological  sanction  is  bv  its  very  nature  always  in  extremes  ; 
it  presents  one  with  no  mean  between  absolute  good  and  abso- 
lute   evil,    both     conceived    as    eternal.       And    this     being 
granted,    how   should    believers,   who   are    dominated    by   an 
exclusive  preoccupation   with   an   ardent  and  profound  faith, 
hesitate    to    employ    constraint    in    case    of    need    when    the 
matter  at  stake  is  so  great— is  of  absolute  and  eternal  good 
or  of  absolute  and  eternal  evil  ?     For  them  the  only  value  of 
free-will  lies  in  its   use — in  its   use  toward   its  proper  object, 
which  is  the  fulfilment  of  the  divine  will.     In  the  presence  of 
an  eternity  of  penalties  to  be  avoided,  everything  seems  per- 
missible ;  any  means  seems  good   provided  it  be   successful. 
Possessed  of  that  implicit  certitude  which  is  inseparable  from  an 


146      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

absolute  and  explicit  faith,  what  really  enthusiastic  soul  would 
hold  back  before  the  employment  of  force?  Accordingly,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  every  religion  which  is  at  once  new  and  powerful 
is  intolerant.  The  appearance  of  tolerance  marks  a  decline  of 
faith ;  a  religion  which  allows  for  the  existence  of  another 
is  a  religion  in  decay.  One  cannot  believe  anything  "  with  all 
one's  heart  "  without  a  sentiment  of  pity  and  even  of  horror 
for  those  who  believe  differently.  If  I  were  absolutely  certain 
of  possessing  the  supreme  and  ultimate  verity,  should  I  hesi- 
tate to  turn  the  world  upside-down  to  make  it  prevail  ?  One 
puts  blinkers  on  a  horse  to  keep  him  from  seeing  to  the  right 
or  left ;  he  looks  straight  ahead  and  runs  forward  under  the  whip 
with  the  hardiness  and  vigour  of  ignorance;  it  is  in  the  same 
fashion  that  the  partisans  of  an  absolute  dogma  move  through 
life.  "  Every  positive  religion,  every  immutable  form,"  says 
Benjamin  Constant,  "  leads  directly  to  intolerance,  providing 
one  reasons  logically." 

The  reply  to  Benjamin  Constant  is  that  it  is  one  thing  to 

believe  that  one  knows  the  way  to  salvation  and  another  thing 

to  force  others  to  walk  in  that  way.     The  priest 

Use  of  force  as  ,  .  ,  ,  ...  ^    ,  , 

justifiable  in  a        looks  upon  himselt  as  the  physician  ot  the  soul; 

priest  as  in  a  ^-q  wish  to  minister  by  violence  to  an  ailing  soul, 
physician.  ,,  . 

"  is  quite  as  if,"  it  has  been  said,  "  the  physician  of 

the  body  for  greater  certainty  should  take  the  precaution  of 
having  his  patient  condemned  to  death  or  to  hard  labor  in 
case  of  disobedience  to  his  prescriptions."'  Assuredly  it 
would  involve  a  contradiction  in  terms  for  the  physician  of 
the  body  to  wish  to  bring  it  to  death  ;  but  it  in  nowise  involves 
a  contradiction  for  the  physician  of  the  soul  to  wish  to  put  con- 
straint upon  the  body.  The  objection  falls  of  its  own  weight. 
For  the  rest,  let  us  not  deceive  ourselves;  if  the  physicians  of 
the  body  leave  their  patients  free,  it  is  sometimes  that  they 
cannot  help  so  doing,  simply;  in  certain  grave  cases  they 
insist  on  having  the  patient  under  their  control  in  a  hospital, 
which  is,  after  all,  a  sort  of  prison.  If  a  European  physician  had 
to  prescribe  for  one  of  those  American  Indians,  whose  habit 
it  is  in  an  attack  of  smallpox,  when  the  fever  reaches  forty 

'  M.  Franck,   Des  rapports  de  la  religion  et  de  I'EJat. 


DOGMATIC  FAITH.  I47 

degrees,  to  plunge  into  the  water  to  refresh  themselves,  the 
first  thing  he  would  do  would  be  to  strap  his  patient  to  his 
cot.  And  every  physician  would  like  really  to  be  able  to  pro- 
ceed after  the  same  fashion,  even  in  Europe,  even  at  the 
present  day,  with  people  like  Gambetta,  Mirabeau,  and  many 
others  less  illustrious,  who  kill  themselves  by  negligence. 

Besides,  one  must  not  reason  as  if  the  believer  could  isolate 
himself  and  act  only  for  himself.     For  example,  to  a  Catholic 

what  is  the  meaning  of  absolute  liberty  of  choice 
peSedXtty.  i"    education  ?     It  means  the  right  of  parents  to 

damn  their  children.  Is  this  right  thus  permis- 
sible in  their  eyes  ?  There  are  books  calculated  to  destroy  faith  ; 
books  bv  Voltaire,  or  Strauss,  or  Renan ;  books  which,  if 
circulated,  result  in  our  losing  our  souls,  "a  thing  far  more 
grave  than  the  death  of  the  body,"  as  Theodore  de  Beze  said, 
after  St.  Augustine.  Can  a  nation  truly  penetrated  by  a  Chris- 
tian charity  allow  such  books  to  be  circulated  on  the  pretext 
of  liberty  of  conscience  ?  No  ;  one  must  before  all  else  deliver 
the  very  will  from  the  bonds  of  heresy  and  error  ;  it  is  on  this 
condition  only  that  it  can  be  free.  Moreover,  one  must  prevent 
the  corrupt  conscience  from  corrupting  others.  We  see  plainly 
that  charitable  intolerance  is  justified  from  an  exclusively 
theological  point  of  view.  It  rests  on  logical  reasonings  of 
which  the  point  of  departure  alone  is  vicious.' 

'  It  is  easy  to  understand  the  high  ecclesiastical  authorities  in  the  Catholic 
Church,  who  maintain  as  an  article  of  faith  the  right  to  repress  error.  Recollect 
the  well-known  pages  in  which  St.  Augustine  speaks  of  what  good  effects  he  had 
observed  to  result  from  the  employment  of  constraint  in  religious  matters.  "A 
great  many  of  those  who  have  been  brought  back  into  the  Church  by  force  confess 
themselves  to  be  greatly  rejoiced  at  having  been  delivered  from  their  former  errors, 
who,  however,  by  I  know  not  what  force  of  custom,  would  never  have  thought  of 
changing  for  the  better  if  the  fear  of  the  law  had  not  put  them  in  mind  of  the  truth. 
Good  precepts  and  wholesome  fear  must  go  together  so  that  not  only  the  light  of 
truth  may  drive  away  the  gloom  of  error,  but  that  charity  may  break  the  bonds 
of  bad  custom,  so  that  we  may  rejoice  over  the  salvation  of  the  many.  .  .  It  is 
written  :  '  Bid  them  to  enter  in.'  .  .  God  Himself  did  not  spare  his  son,  but 
delivered  Him  for  our  sake  to  the  executioners."  Schiller  makes  the  great  inquisitor 
\Vi  Don  Carlos  say  the  same  thing.  See  St.  Augustine,  Epist.  cxiii.  17,5— St. 
Paul,  Ephes.,  vi.  5,  6,  9.  Lastly,  recollect  also  the  reasoned  decision  of  the  doctors 
and  councils.  "Human  government,"  said  St.  Thomas,  "  is  derived  from  (/2t7«<i' 
government  and  should  imitate  it.     Now  although  God  is  all-powerful  and  infinitely 


148      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

In  Older  to  understand  how  legitimate  religious  intolerance 

appears  from  its  own  point  of  view,  we  must  remember  with 

what  perfect  calm  we  forbid  and  punish  acts  that 

Aud  a  half-caste  ^j.g  jjjj.g^^ J       Qj^^j.^       to  the  actual  Conditions  of 
public  spirit.  ■'  ■' 

our  social  life  (for  example,  the  public  outrage  of 

good  morals,  etc.).  Now  we  know  that  all  religion  superposes 
another  society  upon  the  actual  one  ;  it  conceives  men's  life 
as  enveloped  and  bounded  by  the  life  of  the  gods  ;  it  must 
therefore  seek  to  maintain  the  conditions  of  this  super- 
natural society  with  not  less  energy  than  we  employ  to  main- 
tain our  human  society,  and  the  conditions  of  this  superior 
society  lead  to  the  multiplication  of  all  the  prohibitive  rules 
that  we  have  previously  imposed  on  our  existence  with  our  fel- 
lows; imaginary  walls  cannot  avoid  being  added  to  the  walls 
and  ditches  already  impeding  circulation  on  the  earth's  surface  : 
if  we  live  with  the  gods,  we  must  expect  to  be  jostled  by  them, 
and  curbed  in  their  name.  This  state  of  things  cannot  disap- 
pear entirely  until  we  cease  to  believe  we  are  co-members  of  a 
society  with   the  gods,  until  we  see   them    transmuted    into 

good,  He  nevertheless  permits  in  the  universe  that  He  has  made  the  existence  of  evils 
which  He  could  prevent  ;  He  permits  them  for  fear  that  in  suppressing  them  more 
than  equivalent  goods  might  be  suppressed  incidentally  along  with  them  and  greater 
evils  provoked  in  their  stead.  The  same  is  true  in  human  government  ;  rulers 
naturally  tolerate  certain  evils  for  fear  of  putting  an  obstacle  in  the  tvay  of  certain 
goods,  or  of  causing  greater  evils,  as  St.  Augustine  said  in  the  treatise  on  Order. 
It  is  thus  that  infidels,  though  they  sin  in  their  rites,  may  be  tolerated,  either 
because  of  some  good  coming  fro>n  them,  or  to  avoid  some  evil.  The  Jews  observe 
their  rites,  in  which  formerly  the  truth  of  the  faith  that  we  hold  was  prefigured  ; 
the  result  is  advantageous  in  this,  that  we  have  the  testimony  of  our  enemies  in  favour 
of  our  faith,  and  that  the  object  of  our  faith  is,  so  to  speak,  shown  in  a  reflected  image. 
As  for  the  worship  of  the  other  unbelievers,  which  is  opposed  in  every  way  to  truth 
and  is  entirely  useless,  it  jvoiild  merit  no  tolerance  if  it  were  not  to  avoid  some  evil, 
such  as  the  scandal  or  the  trouble  which  jnight  result  from  the  suppression  of  this 
worship  ;  or  again  as  an  impediment  to  the  salvation  of  those  who,  under  cover  of  this 
species  of  tolerance,  come  little  by  little  into  the  faith.  It  is  for  that  reason  that  the 
Church  has  occasionally  tolerated  even  the  worship  of  heretics,  and  heathens,  when 
the  number  of  infidels  was  great."  {Summa  theol.,  2a;  q.  x,  a.  11.)  One  readily 
perceives  the  nature  of  tolerance  in  that  sense.  It  does  not  in  the  least  recognize  the 
right  of  those  who  are  the  object  of  it  :  if  it  does  not  maltreat  them,  it  is  simply  to 
avoid  a  greater  evil,  or  rather  because  its  power  is  too  small,  and  tlie  number  of 
infidels  is  too  large. 

A  professor  of  theology  at   the  Sorbonne  has  recently  contested  the  charge  of 


DOGMATIC  FAITH.  149 

simple  ideals.     Ideals  never  necessitate  the  exclusiveness  and 

intolerance  that  realities  do. 

On  the  whole,  one  must  distinguish  two  kinds  of  virtue  on 

which  religion  has  influence.     The  first  are  the  virtues  that 

may  be  called  positive  and  active,  of  the  heart 
Tolerance 

highly  intellect-  and  of  instinct,  like  charity  and  generosity;  at 
^*^"  all  times  and  in  all  countries  they  have  existed 

among  men  ;  religion  exalts  them,  and  to  Christianity  the 
honour  is  due  of  having  developed  them  to  their  highest 
degree.  The  second  category  includes  the  purely  intellect- 
ual virtues,  whose  operation  consists  rather  in  checking  and 
confining  than  in  extending  the  sphere  of  one's  activity — the 
virtues  of  self-possession,  of  abstinence,  and  of  tolerance, 
which  are  quite  modern  really  and  the  result  of  science,  which 
has  brought  about  a  clearer  knowledge  of  its  own  limitations 
even.  Tolerance  is  a  very  complex  virtue,  much  more 
intellectual  than  charity;  it  is  a  virtue  of  the  head  rather  than 
of  the  heart  ;  the  proof  of  it  is  that  charity  and  intolerance 
are  often  found  together,  forming  an  alliance  rather  than 
opposing  each  other.     When  tolerance  is    not    philosophical 

Catholic  intolerance.  (M.  Alfred  Fouillee  had  just  spoken  of  it  in  his  Social  Science.) 
He  did  so  for  reasons  that  may  be  cited  as  further  proof.  "  Neither  to-day,  nor 
ever,  in  any  epoch  of  its  history,  has  the  Catholic  Church  intended  to  impose  acceptance 
of  the  truth  by  violence.  All  great  theologians  have  taught  that  the  act  of  faith  is  a 
voluntary  act,  which  presupposes  an  illumination  of  the  mind  ;  but  they  have  also 
taught  that  constraint  may  favour  this  illumination,  and  iti  especial  may  preserve 
others  from  a  bad  example,  from  a  contagious  darkness.  The  Christian  Church 
has  had  no  need  of  the  sword  to  evangelize  the  nations  ;  if  it  has  shed  blood  in  its 
triumph,  it  has  been  its  own."  Has  it,  then,  not  shed  the  blood  of  others  ?  If  one 
counts  all  the  murders  committed  by  intolerance  in  the  name  of  absolute  dogma, 
in  every  country  in  the  world  ;  if  one  could  measure  all  the  bloodshed  ;  if  one 
could  gather  together  all  the  dead  bodies — would  the  pile  not  mount  higher  than 
the  spires  of  the  cathedrals  and  the  domes  of  the  temples,  where  man  still  goes,  with 
unalterable  fervour,  to  invoke  and  bless  the  "  God  of  Love  "  ?  Faith  in  a  God  who 
talks  and  acts,  who  has  a  history  of  His  own,  His  Bible,  His  prophet  and  His  priest, 
will  always  end  by  being  intolerant.  By  adoring  a  jealous  and  vengeful  God,  one 
becomes  in  the  end  His  accomplice.  One  tacitly  approves  all  tlie  crimes  com- 
mitted in  His  name  and  often  (if  one  believes  the  Holy  Scriptures)  commanded  by 
Him.  One  endeavours  to  forget  these  things  when  they  are  too  stained  with  blood 
and  filth.  The  monuments  of  such  bloody  scenes  have  been  razed,  and  the  places 
to  which  the  strongest  memories  are  attached  have  been  purified  and  transformed: 
the  partisans  of  certain  dogmas  need  to  wash  their  hearts  also  in  lustral  water. 


15°      DISSOLUT/OX  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

ami  wliolly  reasoned,  it  takes  on  the  aspect  of  a  simple  good- 
humour  that  greatly  resembles  moral  weakness./  Really  to 
demonstrate  the  greatness  of  tolerance,  one  musf  put  to  the 
front  the  objective  reasons  drawn  from  the  relativity  of 
human  knowledge  and  not  the  subjective  reasons  drawn  from 
our  own  hearts.'  Up  to  the  present  time  tolerance  has  been 
founded  on  respect  for  the  person  and  the  will  of  another: 
"It  is  necessary,"  it  is  said,  "for  man  to  be  free — free  to 
deceive  himself  and  to  do  evil,  if  need  be  ;  "  and  nothing  i§ 
truer,  but  there  is  another  source  of  tolerance  which  is  more 
substantial  and  tends  to  gain  ground  more  and  more  rapidly 
as  dogmatic  faith  disappears.  This  source  is  distrust  of  human 
thought  and  conscience,  which  are  not  free  not  to  deceive 
themselves,  and  to  which  every  article  of  absolute  faith 
must  necessarily  be  also  an  article  of  error.  So  that,  at  the 
present  day,  tolerance  is  no  longer  a  virtue,  but  simply  an 
affair  of  the  intelligence  ;  the  further  one  goes,  the  more  one 
sees  that  one  does  not  in  the  least  understand  ;  the  more  one 
sees  that  the  beliefs  of  one's  neighbour  are  a  complement  to 
one's  own,  that  no  one  of  us  can  be  right  alone,  to  the  exclu- 
sion of  all  others.  By  the  mere  development  of  the  intelligence 
which  makes  us  aware  of  the  infinite  variety  of  the  world  and 
the  impossibility  of  any  one  solution  of  eternal  problems, 
each  individual  opinion  comes  to  have  a  value  in  our  eyes:  it 
is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  a  bit  of  evidence  bearing  on  the 
theory  of  the  universe,  and  it  goes  without  the  saying  that  no 
one  item  of  evidence  can  be  made  the  basis  of  a  definitive 
judgment,  a  dogmatic  conclusion,  without  appeal. 

//.  Broad  dogviatie  faith. 

"  The  aim  of  most  men,"  as  an  English  writer  says,  "  is  to 

pass  through    life    with   as  little    expenditure   of   thought  as 

possible :  "  but  what  is  to   become  of  those  who 
Conflict  between     ,  .    ,  ,,-.,,  i  •  i  i      t- 

intelligence  and  thmk,  and  of  mtellectual  men  m  general  r*  Even 
dogmatism,  without  suspccting  it,  one  will  ultimately  allow 

an  interpretation  more  or  less  broad  of  the  texts  to  which  one 
has  seemed  to  cling  in  a  narrow  and  literal  faith.  There  is 
almost    no    such    thing    as    a    perfectly    orthodox    believer. 

'  See  A.  Fouillee,  Systhnes  de  morale  coiiicmpoyains. 


DOGMATIC  FAITH.  151 

Heresy  enters  by  one  door  or  another,  and  strange  to. say 
it  is  that  precise  fact  that  keeps  traditional  faith  aUve  in 
face  of  the  progress  of  science.  An  absolute  and  immutably 
literal  faith  would  be  too  offensive  to  last  long.  Orthodoxy 
either  kills  the  nations  in  which  it  entirely  stifles  freedom  of 
thought  or  it  kills  faith  in  itself.  Intelligence  can  never  stand 
still  :  it  is  a  light  that  moves,  like  that  cast  by  the  sun  on 
the  dripping  oars  as  the  boat  is  being  lustily  rowed  along. 

The  partisans  of  literal  interpretation  and  authority    seem 
sooner  or   later  to  accept   two  irrational   hypotheses   instead 

of   one ;  it   is   not    enough    for   them   that   there 
doSyStional,   ^^^ve  been  certain  revelations  from  on  high,  they 

insist  that  the  very  terms  in  which  the  divine 
thought  is  incorporated  shall  be  divine,  sacred,  and  immutable, 
and  of  an  absolute  exactitude.  They  divinize  human  lan- 
guage. They  never  think  of  the  dififlculties  that  someone 
might  feel  who  was  not  a  god  but  simply  a  Descartes,  a 
Newton,  or  a  Leibnitz,  to  express  his  great  thoughts  in  an 
unformed  and  half-savage  tongue.  Genius  is  always  superior 
to  the  language  that  it  makes  use  of,  and  the  words  themselves 
are  responsible  for  many  of  the  errors  in  its  thoughts ;  and  a 
"  divine  inspiration,"  brought  down  to  the  level  of  our  lan- 
guage, would  be  perhaps  more  embarrassed  than  an  even  purely 
human  inspiration.  Nothing  therefore  can  be  stranger,  to 
those  who  examine  the  matter  calmly,  than  to  see  civilized 
nations  seeking  for  a  complete  expression  of  the  divine 
thought  in  the  literatures  of  ancient  peoples  and  semi-barba- 
rous nations,  whose  language  and  intelligence  were  infinitely 
inferior  to  ours  ;  their  god,  talking  and  dictating,  would 
nowadays  hardly  be  given  a  certificate  of  competency  in  a 
primary  examination.  It  is  the  grossest  anthropomorphism 
to  conceive  a  divinity  not  in  the  type  of  an  ideal  man  but 
in  the  type  of  a  barbarous  man.  Also,  it  is  not  simply  that  a 
literal  faith  (the  primitive  form  of  all  revealed  faith)  ulti- 
mately appears  to  be  entirely  irrational  ;  it  is  that  this 
characteristic  becomes  constantly  more  marked,  for  the  reason 
that  faith  stands  still,  or  tries  to  stand  still,  while  humanity 
marches  on. 


15^      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IX  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

But  for  a  certain  number  of  heresies  born  and   circulated 
among  them,   but  for  a  constant  stream    of   fresh    thought, 

people  holding  by  a  literal  religion  would  be  a 
teilectual^lndiffer-  ^'^/^'^  nwrtiiuiH  in  history,  a  little  "  like  the  faith- 
ence or  death.  ful  Tibetians  of  Dalai-lama,"  as  Von  Hartmann 
says.  Literal  religions  cannot  last  and  perpetuate  themselves 
except  by  a  series  of  compromises.  There  are  ahvays  in  the 
minds  of  the  sincere  and  intelligent  believer  periods  of  ad- 
vancement and  of  reaction,  steps  forward  followed  by  a 
recoil.  Confessors  know  these  sudden  changes  well,  and  are 
prepared  to  deal  with  them  and  keep  them  within  certain 
limits.  They  themselves  are  subject  to  such  changes  ;  how 
many  of  them  have  thought  they  believed  and  been  suspected 
of  heresy  !  If  we  could  see  into  the  bottom  of  their  minds 
what  reconciliations  should  we  not  perceive,  what  secret  ac- 
commodations and  compliances  !  There  is  in  every  one  of  us 
something  that  protests  against  literal  faith,  and  if  this  protes- 
tation is  not  explicit,  it  is  often  none  the  less  real.  No  one 
can  hope  to  read  more  exactly  than  he  who  reads  between  the 
lines.  When  one  venerates  and  admires  everything,  it  is  gen- 
erally what  one  simply  does  not  understand.  Very  many 
minds  positively  like  vagueness  and  accommodate  themselves 
to  it,  they  believe  in  gross  and  arrange  the  details  to  suit 
themselves  ;  sometimes  even,  after  accepting  a  thing  as  a  whole, 
they  eliminate  one  by  one  all  its  parts.  Generally  speaking, 
those  who  aspire  to  literal  faith  nowadays  are  divisible  into 
three  classes:  the  indifferent,  the  blind,  and  unconscious 
Protestants. 

The  Protestantism  of  Luther  and  Calvin  was  a  compromise 
replacing  a  despotism  ;  it  was  a  broad  faith,  although  it  is  at 

the  same  time  intolerant  and  orthodox  ;  for  there 

Protestantism  .  i  •   i      , 

andiibertyof  are  certain  things  even  m  Protestantism  which  do 
conscience.  j^^^   admit  of   compromise  ;  it    contains   dogmas 

that  it  is  impious  to  reject,  and  which,  to  the  free-thinker,  seem 
scarcely  less  contrary  to  calm  reason  than  the  dogmas  of 
Catholicicm  ;  it  contains  a  system  of  metaphysical  or  historical 
theses  regarded  not  as  merely  human,  but  as  divine.  The 
most  desirable  thing  in  a  religion  that  is  to  be  progressive  is 


DOGMATIC  FAITH.  153 

that  the  sacred  texts  should  be  ambiguous ;  and  the  text  of 
the  Bible  is  not  ambiguous  enough.  How  are  we  to  doubt, 
for  example,  the  divinity  of  Christ's  mission  ?  How  doubt  the 
miracles?  A  belief  in  the  divinity  of  Christ,  and  the  genuine- 
ness of  the  miracles,  are  the  very  foundation  of  the  Christian 
religion  ;  Luther  was  obliged  to  accept  them,  and  in  our  day 
even  they  bear  down  with  their  full  weight  on  orthodox  Prot- 
estantism. So  that  what  seemed  at  first  a  generous  concession 
to  liberty  of  thought  amounts  in  the  end  to  little.  The  circle 
one  moves  about  in  is  so  contracted  !  Protestants,  too,  are 
fettered  ;  the  chain  is  simply  longer  and  more  flexible.  Prot- 
estantism has  rendered  services  of  great  importance  to  law 
and  to  liberty  of  conscience  ;  but  alongside  of  the  concessions 
to  liberty  that  it  enforced,  it  contains  dogmas  from  which  the 
use  of  "  charitable  constraint "  may  logically  be  deduced. 
These  dogmas  which  are  essential  to  true  Protestantism  are  : 
original  sin,  conceived  as  even  more  radical  than  it  appears  in 
Catholicism,  and  as  destructive  of  freedom  of  the  will  ;  the 
redemption,  which  recognizes  the  death  of  God  the  Son  as 
necessary  to  redeem  man  from  the  vindictiveness  of  God  the 
Father  ;  predestination  in  all  its  rigour  ;  grace  and  election  in 
their  most  fatalistic  and  mystical  form  ;  and  last  and  most  im- 
portant, an  eternity  of  suffering  without  purgatory!  If  all 
these  dogmas  are  simply  philosophical  myths.  Christian  is  a 
purely  verbal  title, and  one  might  as  well  call  one's  self  a  heathen, 
for  all  the  myths  of  Jupiter,  Saturn,  Ceres,  Proserpine,  and 
the  "  divinities  of  Samothrace,"  are  also  susceptible  of  becom- 
ing symbols  of  higher  metaphysics;  we  refer  the  reader  to 
Jamblicus  and  Schelling.  We  must  thus  assume  that  orthodox 
Protestants  believe  in  hell,  redemption,  and  grace  ;  and  if  so, 
the  consequences  that  we  have  deduced  from  these  dogm.as 
become  inevitable.  Also  Luther,  Calvin,  Theodore  de  Beze, 
have  preached  and  practised  intolerance  for  the  same  reasons 
as  did  the  Catholics.  They  claimed  the  right  of  private  judg- 
ment for  themselves  alone,  and  only  in  so  far  as  they  felt  need 
of  it  ;  they  never  raised  it  to  the  level  of  an  orthodox  doctrine. 
Calvin  burned  Servetius,  and  the  Puritans  in  America  in  1692 
punished  witchcraft  with  death. 


154      DISSOLUTIOX  OF  RELIGIONS  IX  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

If  Protestantism  has  in  the  long  run  served  the  cause  of  Hb- 
erty  of  conscience,  the  reason  is  simply  that  every  heresy  is 
J,       ,  an  instance  of  liberty  and  of  that  enfranchisement 

serves  liberty  of  which  brings  in  its  train  a  series  of  additional 
conscience.  heresies.     In  other  words,  heresy  is  the  victory  of 

doubt  over  faith.  By  doubt  Protestantism  serves  the  cause 
of  liberty ;  by  faith  it  would  cease  to  serve  it  and  would  men- 
ace it — if  it  were  logical.  But  the  characteristic  of  certain 
minds  is  precisely  to  come  to  a  halt  halfway  between  freedom' 
and  liberty,  between  faith  and  reason,  between  the  past  and 
the  future. 

Over  and  above  the  dogmas  admitted  in  common,  the  true 
Protestant  demands  further  some  fixed  objective  expression 

of  his  belief:  he  attempts — he   also — to   incorpo- 

Protestantism  ^.^.  ^    .  ,  .  ^  ^      -. 

a  mark  of  logical   ^^^^  ^^  ^^  ^  certam  number  ot  customs  and  rites 

feebleness  in  those  which  Create  the  need  they  satisfy  and  inces- 
■who  bold  it.  ,.,,,.-  ,   .  ,     .  ,  , 

santly  give  fresh  lite  to  a  taith  incessantly  on  the 

point  of  a  decline  ;  he  demands  temples,  priests,  a  ceremonial. 
In  the  item  of  ceremonial  as  well  as  in  the  item  of  dogmas, 
orthodox  Protestants  nowadays  feel  themselves  to  be  much 
superior  to  Catholics  ;  and  they  have  really  rejected  a  con- 
siderable number  of  naive  beliefs  and  of  useless  rites  not  infre- 
quently borrowed  from  paganism.  You  should  hear  an 
excited  Protestant,  in  a  discussion  with  a  Catholic,  speak  of 
the  Mass,  that  degrading  superstition  in  which  "  the  most 
material  and  barbarous  interpretation  possible  "  is  put  upon 
the  words  of  Christ — He  tJiat  eateth  me  shall  live  by  vie.  But 
does  not  this  same  Protestant  admit  with  the  Catholic  the 
miracle  of  the  redemption,  of  Christ  sacrificing  himself  to 
save  mankind  ?  If  you  admit  one  miracle,  what  reason  is 
there  to  stop  with  that  or  any  succeeding  miracle  ?  "  Once 
more  in  this  order  of  ideas,"  says  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  "  and 
what  can  be  more  natural  and  beautiful  than  to  imagine  this 
miracle  every  day  repeated,  Christ  offered  in  thousands  of 
places,  everywhere  the  believer  enabled  to  enact  the  work  of 
redemption  and  unite  himself  with  the  Body  whose  sacrifice 
saves  him."     A  beautiful  conception,  you  acknowledge,  for  a 


DOGMATIC  FAITH.  155 

legend,  but  you  refuse  to  put  faith  in  it  on  the  ground  that  it 
shocks  your  reason;  very  good, but  you  reject  in  the  same  breath 
all  the  rest  of  the  irrationalities  that  are  part  and  parcel  of 
Christianity.  If  Christ  sacrificed  himself  for  the  human  race, 
why  should  not  he  sacrifice  himself  for  me  ?  if  he  came  to  a  world 
that  did  not  call  him,  why  should  he  not  come  to  me  who  call 
upon  him  and  pray  to  him  ?  if  God  once  took  on  a  form  of 
flesh  and  blood,  if  He  once  inhabited  a  human  body,  why  find 
it  strange  that  He  should  be  present  in  my  flesh  and  blood  ? 
You  want  miracles,  on  condition  that  you  are  not  to  see 
them;  what  is  the  meaning  of  such  false  modesty?  When 
one  believes  a  thing,  one  must  live  in  the  heart  of  this  belief, 
one  must  see  it  and  feel  it  everywhere  ;  when  one  possesses  a 
god,  it  is  in  order  that  he  may  walk  and  breathe  on  earth. 
He  whom  we  adore  must  not  be  relegated  to  a  corner  of  the 
heavens,  or  forbidden  to  appear  in  our  midst  ;  and  they  must 
not  be  made  sport  of,  who  see  him,  and  feel  him,  and  touch 
him.  Free-thinkers  may  laugh,  if  they  have  the  courage,  at 
the  priest  who  believes  that  God  is  present  in  the  Host  that 
he  holds  in  his  hands,  and  present  in  the  temple  when  he  of- 
ficiates. They  may  laugh  at  the  .peasant  children  who  believe 
that  Saints  or  the  Virgin  present  themselves  before  them  to 
listen  to  their  wants,  but  a  true  believer  cannot  do  otherwise 
than  take  all  this  seriously.  Protestants  take  baptism  very  seri- 
ously, and  think  it  absolutely  necessary  to  salvation.  Luther 
certainly  believed  in  the  devil  ;  he  saw  him  everywhere,  in 
storms,  in  fires,  in  the  tumult  that  his  passage  along  the  streets 
often  excited,  in  the  interruptions  that  occurred  in  his  sermons  ; 
he  challenged,  and  threatened  all  devils,  "were  they  as  number- 
less as  the  tiles  of  the  roofs."  One  day  he  even  exorcised  the 
Evil  One,  who  had  been  vociferating  in  the  person  of  the  audi- 
ence, so  efificiently  that  the  sermon,  which  opened  in  the 
midst  of  the  greatest  disturbance,  was  finished  in  peace  ;  the 
devil  had  been  frightened.  Why,  then,  do  orthodox  Prot- 
estants, especially  in  our  day,  so  genuinely  wish  to  stop  arbi- 
trarily short  in  their  faith  ?  Why  believe  that  God  or  the 
devil  appeared  to  men  two  thousand  years  ago,  and  at  no 
time  since  ?     Why  believe  in  the  Gospel  cures  and  not  in  the 


156      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

naive  legends  that  are  related  of  the  Communion,  or  in  the 
miracles  at  Lourdes?  All  things  hold  together  in  a  faith,  and 
if  you  propose  outraging  human  reason,  why  not  do  it  thor- 
oughly? As  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  observes,  the  orthodox 
Protestant  doctrine,  in  admitting  that  the  Son  of  God  could 
substitute  himself  as  an  expiatory  victim  for  man,  condemned 
for  the  fault  of  Adam, — in  other  words  that  he  could  suffer  for 
a  crime  that  he  had  not  committed  for  men  who  had  not  com- 
mitted it  either, — is  only  to  accept  the  following  passage  liter- 
ally and  rudely:  "  The  son  of  man  is  come  to  give  his  life  as 
a  ransom  unto  many."  From  the  moment  that  one  holds  lit- 
erally to  a  single  text,  why  not  do  the  same  in  regard  to 
others?  In  introducing  a  certain  share  of  liberty  into  their 
faith,  the  Protestants  have  also  introduced  a  spirit  of  inconse- 
quence ;  this  is  its  characteristic  and  its  defect.  Someone 
said  to  me  once  :  "  If  I  should  try  to  believe  everything, 
I  should  end  by  believing  nothing."  This  was  Luther's  reason- 
ing ;  he  wished  to  make  some  allowances  for  enlightenment  ;  he 
hoped  to  preserve  the  faith  by  minimizing  it.  But  the  limits  are 
artificial.  Only  listen  to  Pascal,  who  possesses  the  French 
talent  for  logic,  and  is  at  the  same  time  a  mathematician,  mak- 
ing ligrht  of  Protestantism.  "  How  I  detest  such  nonsense!  " 
he  cries  :  that  is,  not  to  believe  in  the  Eucharist,  etc.  "  If  the 
Gospel  is  true,  if  Jesus  Christ  is  God,  what  difificulty  is  there  in 
all  that?"  Nobody  saw  more  clearly  than  Pascal  the  things 
that,  as  he  says,  are"  unjust  "  in  certain  Christian  dogmas,  that 
are  "  shocking,"  are  "  far-fetched,"  the  "  absurdities  ";  he  saw  it 
all  and  accepted  it  all.  He  accepted  everything  or  nothing. 
When  one  makes  a  bargain  with  faith,  one  does  not  pick  and 
choose  ;  one  takes  all  and  gives  all.  It  was  Pascal  who  said  that 
atheism  was  a  sign  of  strength  of  mind,  but  a  strength  dis- 
played in  one  direction  only.  One  might  turn  that  round  and 
say  that  Catholicism  implies  strength  of  mind,  at  least  on  one 
point.  Protestantism,  though  of  a  higher  order  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  belief,  remains  to-day  a  mark  of  a  certain  weak- 
ness of  mind  in  those  who,  having  made  the  first  step  toward 
freedom  of  thought,  rest  there  ;  it  is  a  halt  midway.  At 
bottom,  however,  the  two  rival  orthodoxies,  over  which  nowa- 


DOGMATIC  FAITH.  157 

days  civilized  nations  disi)ute,  are  equally  astonishing  to  those 
who  have  passed  beyond  them. 

///.    The  dissolution  of  dogmatic  faith  in  modern  society. 

Can  a  dogmatic  faith,  whether  narrow  or  broad,  indefinitely 

coexist  with  modern  science  ?     We  think  not.     Science  consists 

.  , .  ^     of  two  portions  :  the  constructive  and  the  destruc- 

Dogmatic  faitn 

distanced  by         tive.     The    constructive    portion    is   already    far 


science. 


enough  advanced,  in  modern  society,  to  provide 
for  certain  desiderata  which  dogma  undertook  formerly  to 
supply.  We  have  to-day,  for  example,  more  extended  and 
detailed  information  about  the  genesis  of  the  world  than  is 
found  in  the  Bible.  We  are  attaining  by  degrees  a  certain 
number  of  facts  relating  to  the  affiliation  of  species.  And  all 
the  celestial  or  terrestial  phenomena  which  strike  the  eye  are 
already  completely  explained.  The  definitive  ivhy  has  not 
been  given,  no  doubt ;  we  even  ask  ourselves  if  there  is  one. 
But  the  Junv  has  already  been  in  a  great  part  dealt  with. 
Let  us  not  forget  that  religions  in  the  beginning  took  the 
place  of  physics ;  that  physical  theories  constituted  for  a 
long  time  an  essential  and  preponderant  part  of  them.  Now- 
adays physics  and  religion  have  been  distinguished,  and 
religion  has  lost  by  the  separation  a  large  part  of  its  power, 
which  has  passed  over  to  science. 

The  dissolvent  and  destructive  aspect  of   science  is  not  less 

important.     The   first   to   present   it  in  high  relief  were  the 

physical     sciences     and     astronomy.       All     the 

And  under-         ancient  superstitions  about  the  trembling  of  the 

mined.  ^  ° 

earth,  eclipses,  etc.,  which  were  a  constant 
occasion  of  religious  exaltation,  are  destroyed,  or  nearly  so, 
even  among  the  populace.  Geology  has  overturned  with  a 
single  stroke  the  traditions  of  most  religions.  Physics  has 
done  away  with  miracles.  The  same  almost  may  be  said  of 
meteorology,  which  is  so  recent  and  has  such  a  brilliant  future. 
God  is  still  to  a  man  of  the  people  too  often  the  sender  of 
rain  and  good  weather,  the  Indra  of  the  Hindus.  A  priest 
told  me  the  other  day,  in  the  best  faith  in  the  world,  that  the 

/ 


15^      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

prayers  of  his  parishioners  had  brought  the  country  three  days 
of  sunshine.  In  a  religious  town  if  rain  falls  the  day  of  a 
religious  procession,  and  stops  shortly  before  the  time  of 
setting  out,  the  people  unhesitatingly  believe  that  a  miracle 
has  been  performed.  Sailors,  who  depend  so  entirely  on 
atmospheric  perturbations,  are  more  inclined  to  superstition. 
The  minute  the  weather  can  be  more  or  less  accurately  fore- 
told and  guarded  against,  all  these  superstitions  are  doomed. 
It  is  thus  that  fear  of  thunder  is  rapidly  subsiding  at  the' 
present  day;  this  fear  formed  an  important  factor  in  the 
formation  of  the  ancient  religions.  By  inventing  the  lightning- 
rod,  Franklin  did  more  to  destroy  superstition  than  the  most 
active  propaganda  could  have  done. 

As  M.  Renan    has   remarked,  we  might    even   in    our  day 

demonstrate    scientifically    the    non-existence    of    miraculous 

interference  in   the  affairs  of   this  world   and  the 

Experiment  in     jnef^ficiency    of  requests  to  God    to    modify    the 

miracles.  •'  ^  ■' 

natural  course  of  things  ;  one  might,  for  example, 
minister  to  patients  according  to  the  same  methods,  in  two 
adjoining  rooms  of  a  hospital ;  for  the  one  set  of  patients 
a  priest  might  pray,  and  one  might  see  whether  the  prayer 
would  appreciably  modify  the  means  of  recovery.  The  result 
of  this  sort  of  experiment  on  the  existence  of  a  special  provi- 
dence is  moreover  easy  to  foretell,  and  it  is  doubtful  whether 
any  educated  priest  would  lend  himself  to  it. 

The  sciences  of  physiology  and  psychology  have  explained 
to    us    in   a    natural    way    a  multitude  of  phenomena  of  the 

_  ,.  .        ,        nervous    system    which    we    were    forced    until 

Religion  and  ■' 

physiology  and       recently  to    attribute    to    the  marvellous,    or    to 
psyc  0  ogy.  trickery,  or  to  divine  influence,  or  to  the  devil. 

Finally,  history  is  attacking  not  only  the  object  of  religion, 
but  religions  themselves,  by  displaying  all  the  sinuosities  and 

uncertainties  of  the  thought  that  constructed 
history.^"" ^°         them;  the  primitive  contradictions,  corrected  for 

better  or  for  worse  at  some  later  period,  the 
genesis  of  the  precisest  dogmas  by  the  gradual  juxtaposition 
of  vague  and  heterogeneous  ideas.  Religious  criticism,  the 
elements  of  which   will   sooner  or  later  find  their  way  into 


DOGMATIC  FAITH.  159 

elementary  instruction,  is  the  most  terrible  weapon  that  could 
be  used  against  religious  dogmatism  ;  it  has  produced  and  will 
produce  its  effect  in  Protestant  countries,  where  theology 
passionately  engages  the  multitude.  Religious  faith  tends  to 
give  place  to  curiosity  about  religion  ;  we  understand  more 
readily  the  things  we  do  not  so  absolutely  believe,  and  we  can 
be  more  disinterestedly  interested  in  the  things  that  no  longer 
fill  us  with  a  sacred  horror.  But  the  explanation  of  positive 
religion  seemed  destined  to  be  absolutely  the  opposite  of  its 
justification  :  to  write  the  history  of  religions  is  to  write 
a  damaeins'  criticism  of  them.  When  one  endeavours  to  come 
to  close  quarters  with  their  foundation  in  reality,  one  finds 
it  retire  before  one  little  by  little  and  ultimately  disappear 
like  the  place  where  the  rainbow  rests  upon  the  earth  :  one 
believes  that  one  has  discovered  in  religion  a  bond  between 
heaven  and  earth,  a  pledge  of  alliance  and  hope;  it  is  an 
optical  illusion  which  science  at  once  corrects  and  explains. 

Primary  instruction,  which   is  sometimes   made,  nowadays, 

a  subject  of  ridicule,  is  also  an  altogether  recent  institution  of 

„  ,.  ,        ,       which   in  former  times  there   scarcely  existed   a 

Religion  under- 
mined by  primary   trace,  and   which   profoundly  modifies   all  of  the 

instruction.  terms    of    every    social     and    religious    problem. 

The    modicum    of    elementary   instruction    that    the    modern 

schoolboy  possesses,  in  especial  if  one  adds  some  few  notions 

of   religious  history,  would   alone   suffice   to   put   him    on   his 

guard  against  a  great  many  forms  of  superstition.     Formerly 

it  was  the  custom  for  a  Roman  soldier  to  embrace  the  religion 

of  any,  and  of  every  country,  in  which  he  was  stationed  for  a 

considerable  space  of  time  ;  on  his  return  home  he  would  set 

up  an  altar  to  the  distant  gods  that  he  had  made  his  own  •. 

Sabazius,  Adonis,  the  goddess   of   Syria,  or  Asiatic    Bellona, 

the  Jupiter  of  Baalbec,  or  the  Jupiter  of  Doliche.     To-day  our 

soldiers  and  mariners  bring  back  from  their  travels  little  more 

than  an  incredulous  tolerance,  a  gently  disrespectful  smile  in 

relation  to  gods  in  general. 

The  perfection  of  means  of  communication  is  also  one_of 

the  great  obstacles  to  the  maintenance  of  a  dogmatic  faith  ; 

nothing  belters  a  belief  like  the  abyss  of  a  deep  valley  or  the 


l6o      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

meanderings   of   an    unnavigable    river.      The    last .  surviving 
believers  in  the  religions  of  antiquity  were  the  peasants — pagani; 

whence  the  word  pagan.  But  to-day  the  coun- 
fection  of  the  ^"'  ^''y  ^^  being  thrown  open,  mountains  are  being 
means  of  com-        pierced,  the  perpetually  increasing  activity  in  the 

movement  of  things  and  of  people  results  in  the 
circulation  of  ideas,  in  a  lowering  of  the  pretensions  of  the 
faith,  and  this  levelling  down  must  inevitably  continue  step  by 
step  with  the  progress  of  science.  In  all  times  it  has  beert 
observed  that  the  effect  of  travelling  alters  one's  beliefs. 
To-day  one  travels  standing  still  :  the  intellectual  horizon 
changes  for  one,  whether  one  will  or  not.  Men  like  Papins, 
Watts,  Stephenson,  have  done  as  much  for  the  propagation  of 
free-thought  as  the  boldest  of  philosophers.  Even  in  our  days 
the  piercing  of  the  Isthmus  of  Suez  will  probably  have  done 
more  for  the  enlightenment  of  the  Hindus  than  the  con- 
scientious efforts  of  Ram  Mohun  Roy  or  of  Keshub. 

AmoiU^  the  causes  which  will  tend  in  the  future  to  eliminate 
the  dogma  of  a  special  providence,  let  us  note  the  develop- 

ment  of  the  arts — even  the  art  of  commerce  and 

veiopmeJt^Jfctm-  Q^Jj^j^'^^'y'  ^^^^^  ^^  ^^^^^  ^"  ^^^  ^^^"y  beginnings. 
merceand  Merchants  and  workmen,  equally,  have  learned 

industry,  ,  --s-r— ;~      ~ ^  .     :  .      ,-. 

al ready  to  rely-upon  no  one  but  their  own  i n d i- 
vidual  selves,  to  rely  each  upon  his  own  initiative,  his  personal 
ingeTiuTty'y~ITe'T<nows  that  to  work  is  to  pray,  not  in  the  sense 
that  his  labour  possesses  some  sort  of  mystical  value  but  be- 
cause its  value  is  real  and  within  his  reach  ;  and  he  acquires  by 
that  very  fact  a  vivid  and  increasing  sense  of  responsibility. 
Compare,  for  instance,  the  life  of  a  pointsman  (that  of  a  working- 
man)  with  the  life  of  a  soldier,  and  you  will  see  that  the  conduct 
of  the  first  is  of  necessity  reflective,  and  develops  in  him  a  sense 
of  responsibility,  whereas  the  second — accustomed  to  march 
he  knows  not  where,  to  obey,  he  knows  not  why,  to  vanquish 
or  be  vanquished  he  knows  not  how — lives  among  circum- 
stances which  naturally  inspire  in  him  a  conception  of  irresponsi- 
bility, of  divine  chance,  or  of  hazard.  Moreover,  whenever 
industry  does  not  treat  the  workmanjike^a  machine  bul_f.QXces 
him^  to  acFconsciously  and  withj-eflecti-oii,-it&-natuxal  effect  is 


DOGMATIC  FAITH.  l6l 

to  enfranchise  the  mind.  And  the  same  thing  is  true  of  com- 
merce ;  aFthough  in  coninicrce  a  more  important  role  is  played, 
by  mere  lying  in  wait — mere  passivityj^  the  merchant  waits 
for  a  purchaser,  and  his  coming  or  not  coming  depends  upon 
something  else.  The  superstitions  of  commerce,  however,  will 
grow  feebler  as  the  functions  of  personal  initiative  and  activity 
become  more  extensive.  Thirty  years  ago  in  a  very  religious 
town  there  existed  a  number  of  small  merchants  who  looked 
upon  it  as  a  matter  of  duty  not  to  examine  their  account  book 
till  the  end  of  the  year:  it  would  be,  they  said,  a  distrust 
of  God  to  ascertain  too  often  whether  they  were  losing  or 
gaining;  it  would  bring  bad  luck;  the  less  attention  you  pay 
to  your  income  the  greater  it  grows.  Add  that,  thanks  to 
this  sort  of  reasoning,  which  for  the  rest  was  not  altogether 
without  a  certain  naive  logic,  the  merchants  spoken  of  did  not 
do  an  especially  brilliant  business.  In  modern  commerce 
the  "  positive  "  spirit — restless  intelligence  and  calculation 
outstripping  chance — tends  to  become  the  true  and  sole 
element  of  success  ;  as  to  the  risks  which,  in  spite  of  every 
precaution,  still  remain,  they  are  covered  by  insurance. 

Insurance,  then^is  a  conception  altogether  modern,  whose 
operation  is_to^  substitute  the  direct  action  of  man  for  the 
And  by  the  intervention  of  God  in  private  affairs,  and  which^ 
practice  of  iiisu-  looks  to  the  recompense  for  a  misfortune 
before  it  has  happened.  It  is  probable  that 
insurance,  which  dates  only  some  few  years  back  and  is 
spreading  rapidly,  will  be  applied  some  day  to  almost  every 
form  of  accident  to  which  man  is  liable,  will  be  adapted  to 
every  circumstance  of  life,  will  accompany  us  everywhere, 
will  envelop  us  in  a  protecting  net  ;  and  agriculture  and 
navigation,  and  those  pursuits  generally  in  which  human 
initiative  plays  the  smallest  part,  in  which  one  must  dance 
attendance  upon  the  special  benediction  of  heaven  and  ulti- 
mate success  is  always  contingent,  will  become  increasingh' 
independent  and  free.  It  is  possible  that  the  notion  of  a 
special  providence  will  some  day  be  completely  eliminated 
from  the  sphere  of  economics ;  everything  that  in  any  manner 
whatsoever  is  capable  of  being  estimated  in  terms  of  money 


1 62      DISSOLUTIOX  OF  KELIGIO.VS  LV  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

will  be  covered  by  an  insurance,  shielded  from  accident,  made 

independent  of  divine  favour. 

There  remains  the  purely  personal  sphere,  the  physical  and 

moral  accidents  which  may  befall  us,  the  maladies  that  may 

.   ,  ,  come    upon   ourselves   and  those   who  belong  to 

And  the  prog-  ^  ,        ,  . 

ress  of  medical        US.     That  is  the  sphere  in  which  the  majority  of 

knowledge,  ^^^^^^  f^^j  their  will  most  feeble,  their  perspicacity 

most  at  fault.  Listen  to  a  member  of  the  lower  classes  on  the 
subject  of  physiology  or  medicine,  and  you  will  understand 
how  deep  is  the  abasement  of  their  intelligence  in  this  matter; 
and  often,  indeed,  even  men  of  a  more  extended  education 
are  possessed  of  no  more  knowledge  than  they  on  such  points. 
Speaking  generally,  our  ignorance  of  hygiene  and  the  most 
elementary  notions  of  medicine  is  such  that  we  are  helpless  in 
the  presence  of  physical  evil ;  and  it  is  because  of  this  help- 
lessness, at  the  very  spot  precisely  where  we  most  need 
help,  that  we  seek  for  an  outlet  for  an  embarrassed  volition 
and  a  restless  hope  and  find  it  in  a  petition  addressed  to 
God.  Many  people  never  think  of  praying  except  when  ill, 
or  when  they  see  persons  dear  to  them  ill.  As  always,  so 
here,  a  sense  of  an  absolute  dependence  provokes  a  return  of 
religious  sentiment.  Just  in  proportion  as  instruction  spreads, 
just  in  proportion  as  the  natural  sciences  become  of  service, 
we  feel  ourselves  armed  with  a  certain  power,  even  in  the  face 
of  physical  accident.  In  more  than  usually  pious  families, 
the  physician  scarcely  assumed  formerly  any  other  character 
than  that  of  an  instrument  of  special  providence;  one  had 
confidence  in  him,  less  on  the  score  of  his  talent  than  of  his 
sanctity ;  that  confidence  was  absolute  ;  one  washed  one's 
hands  of  all  responsibility,  as  primitive  people  do  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  sorcerers  and  "  priest  physicians."  Nowadays, 
however,  the  physician  is  beginning  to  be  looked  upon  as  a 
man  like  another,  who  must  rely  upon  himself,  who  receives 
no  inspiration  from  on  high,  and  who  must,  in  consequence, 
be  chosen  with  care,  and  aided  and  sustained  in  his  task.  It 
is  understood  that  the  remedies  employed  by  him  are  inno- 
cent of  mystery,  that  their  operation  is  uniform,  that  the 
matter    is   altogether   one  of  intelligence    in    their   use  ;    and 


DOGMATIC  FAITH.  163 

instead  of  putting  one's  self,  like  so  much  brute  matter,  into 
the  pln'sician's  hands,  one  does  one's  best  to  co-operate 
Avith  him.  When  we  hear  someone  calling  for  help  and 
are  free  to  run  to  him,  does  it  ever  occur  to  us  nowadays 
to  fall  upon  our  knees?  No;  we  should  even  consider  a 
passive  prayer  as  an  indirect  form  of  homicide.  The  epoch 
is  past  when  Ambroise  Pare  could  say  modestly:  "  I  poulticed 
him,  God  cured  him."  The  fact  is,  God  does  not  cure  those 
whom  the  physician  does  not  poultice  properly.  The  prog- 
ress of  natural  science  will  result  really  in  a  sort  of  preventive 
insurance,  no  longer  confined  wholly  to  the  sphere  of  eco- 
nomics ;  and  we  shall  be  able  some  day  to  insure  ourselves, 
not  simply  against  the  economical  consequences  of  such  and 
such  an  accident,  but  against  the  accident  itself ;  we  shall  fore- 
see it  and  avoid  it,  as  we  not  infrequently  nowadays  foresee 
and  avoid  poverty.  And  finally,  in  respect  even  to  unavoid- 
able evils,  it  will  occur  to  no  one  to  rely  upon  anything  but 
human  science  and  human  effort. 

Owing  to  the  causes  above  enumerated,  how  far  we  have 

travelled  since  the  time  of  the  ancients  and  the  Middle  Ages! 

Progress  in  mat-   •^^'^  ^he  first  place  we  no  longer  lend  credence  to 

ters  of  belief  since   oracles    or  to  predictions.     The  law  at  least  no 

heathen  antiquity    ,  1         1  1         r    1         1  • 

and  the  Middle  longer  goes  the  length  of  lendmg  credence  to 
^^^'  them,  and   even   punishes  those   who  endeavour 

to  speculate  upon  a  naivete  of  their  more  innocent  neigbours. 
Soothsayers  at  the  present  day  are  no  longer  lodged  in 
Temples.  And  in  no  case  are  philosophers  and  higher  per- 
sonages among  their  clients.  We  are  far  from  the  time  when 
Socrates  and  his  disciples  made  a  pilgrimage  to  consult  the 
oracle,  when  the  gods  spoke,  and  gave  advice,  and  regulated  the 
conduct  of  men,  and  took  the  place  of  attorneys,  of  physicians, 
of  judges,  and  decided  upon  peace  and  war.  If  it  had  been 
affirmed  to  a  pagan  that  the  day  would  come  when  man  would 
find  the  oracle  at  Delphi  a  superfluity,  he  would  have  been  as 
frankly  surprised  as  a  Christian  is  to-day  when  he  hears  it 
afifirmed  that  cathedrals,  priests,  and  religious  ceremonies  will 
some  day  become  a  superfluity. 

The    role   which   prophecies  played    in    the    religion    of   the 


1 64      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

Hebrews     is    well     known.      In    the     Middle     Ages     certain 

prophecies,  such  as  that  of  the  millennium,  were  publicly  and 

miserably    put    to    the    proof.      Since    that    time 
Tendency  to-  ^     ^  ■         ,         r  f 

ward  simplicity      dogmatic    religion,  in  the   fear  ot    compromismg 

and  uniformity.  Jtsclf,  has  stood  aloof  from  oracles  and  prophecies, 
preferring  increase  of  security  to  extent  of  influence.  Thus 
by  degrees  authoritative  religion  has  come  to  renounce  its  sway 
over  one  of  the  most  important  portions  of  human  life,  which 
it  pretended  formerly  to  possess  a  knowledge  of,  and  to  regu- 
late— the  future.  It  contents  itself  to-day  with  the  present. 
Its  predictions,  ever  vaguer  and  more  vague,  nowadays  bear 
only  on  the  period  beyond  the  grave  ;  it  contents  itself  with 
promising  heaven  to  the  faithful — which  the  Catholic  religion 
indeed  goes  the  length  of  in  some  measure  securing  for  them 
by  absolution.  And  one  may  recognize  in  the  confessional  a 
certain  substitute  for  the  divination  of  former  times.  The 
hand  of  the  priest  opens  or  shuts  the  door  of  heaven  for  the 
believer  kneeling  in  the  shadow  of  the  confessional ;  he  wields 
a  power  in  some  respects  greater  than  that  of  the  Pythoness 
who  might  determine  with  a  word  the  fate  of  battles.  Con- 
fession itself,  however,  has  disappeared  in  the  stronger  and 
younger  offshoots  of  Christianity.  In  orthodox  Protestantism 
one  is  one's  self  the  judge  of  one's  own  future,  and  possesses  no 
other  clew  to  one's  destiny  than  the  dictum  of  one's  own  con- 
science, with  all  its  uncertainty  upon  its  head.  Owing  to  this 
transformation  dogmatic  faith  in  the  word  of  a  priest  or  a 
prophet  tends  to  become  a  simple  reliance  on  the  voice  of 
conscience,  which  becomes  ever  less  and  less  authoritative, 
ever  more  and  more  feeble  in  the  face  of  doubt.  Faith  in 
oracles  and  in  the  visible  finger  of  Providence  in  this  world 
has  become  to-day  simply  a  somewhat  hesitating  reliance  upon 
an  inner  oracle  and  an  together  transcendental  Providence. 
This  is  one  of  the  items  in  respect  to  which  religious  evolution 
may  be  considered  as  already  something  like  complete,  and 
religious  individualism  as  on  the  point  of  replacing  obedience 
to  the  priest,  and  the  negation  of  the  marvellous  as  substituted 
for  antique  superstition. 

The  strength  of  the  belief  in  a  personal  God  has  been  in  all 


DOGMATIC  FAITH.  165 

times  proportionate  to  the  strength  of  the  behef  in  a  devil — 

we  have  just  seen  an  illustration  of  it  in  the  case  of  Luther. 

„,...-,       In  effect  these  two  beliefs  are  correlatives;  they 

Belief  in  God  •' 

falls  with  belief      are  the  opposite  faces  of  one  and  the  same  anthro- 
m devils.  pomorphism.     Well,  in    our    days,  belief   in   the 

devil  is  incontestably  becoming  feebler;  and  thisenfeeblement 
is  even  especially  characteristic  of  the  present  epoch  ;  there 
has  at  no  other  time  been  anything  to  equal  it.  There  is  not 
an  educated  person  to  be  found  in  whom  the  notion  of  a  devil 
does  not  excite  a  smile.  That,  believe  me,  is  a  sign  of  the 
times,  a  manifest  proof  of  the  decline  of  dogmatic  religion. 
Wherever  the  power  of  dogmatic  religion  by  an  exception  to 
the  general  course  of  things  has  retained  its  vitality,  and  re- 
tained it,  as  in  America,  even  to  the  point  of  giving  birth  to 
new  dogmas,  the  fear  of  the  devil  has  subsisted  in  its  entirety; 
wherever,  as  in  more  enlightened  regions  than  America,  this 
fear  no  longer  exists  except  as  a  symbol  or  a  myth,  the  inten- 
sity and  the  fecundity  of  the  religious  sentiment  decline 
inevitably  in  the  same  degree.  The  fate  of  Javeh  is  bound  up 
with  that  of  Lucifer  ;  angels  and  devils  go  hand  in  hand,  as  in 
some  fantastic  mediaeval  dance.  The  day  when  Satan  and  his  l- 
followers  shall  be  definitively  vanquished  and  annihilated  in 
the  minds  of  the  people,  the  celestial  powers  will  not  have 
loner  to  live. 


*fc> 


To  sum   up,  in  all  these  relations,  dogmatic   faith — and   in 

especial,  such   as   is  narrow,  authoritative,  intolerant,  and   at 

enmity  with   a  spirit  of  science — seems  on  every 

Results,  1        .        ,  ,-  ■         ■[     \. 

account  destined  to  disappear,  or  to  survive,  it  at 

all,   among   a  small   number  of  believers.     Every  doctrine,  no 

matter  how  moral  or  how  elevating,  seems  to  us  nowadays  to 

lose  these  attributes  and  to  become  degraded  from  the  moment 

it  proposes  to  impose  itself  upon  the  human  mind  as  a  dogma. 

Dogma   happily — that  crystallization  of  faith — is  an  unstable 

compound  ;  like  certain  complex  crystals,  it  is  apt  to  explode, 

under  a  concentrated  ray  of  light,  into  dust.     INIodern  criticism 

supplies  the  ray.     If  Catholicism,  in  pursuit  of  religious  unity, 

logically  results  in  the  doctrine  of  infallibility,  modern  criticism 


1 66      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

in  the  course  of  its  establishment  of  the  relativity  of  human 
knowledge  and  of  the  essential  fallibility  of  intelligence  in 
general,  tends  toward  religious  individualism  and  toward  the 
dissolution  of  every  universal  or  "Catholic"  dogma.  And 
on  that  score  orthodox  Protestantism  is  itself  menaced  with 
ruin,  for  it  also  has  preserved  in  its  dogmas  an  element  of 
Catholicity,  and  by  that  very  fact  of  intolerance,  if  not  prac- 
tical and  civil,  at  least  theoretical  and  religious. 


CHAPTER  II. 

SYMBOLIC   AND    MORAL   FAITH . 

I.  Substitution  of  metaphysical  symbolism  for  dogma — Liberal 
Frotestaiuism — Com[)arison  with  Brahmanism — Substitution  of 
moral  symbolism  for  metaphysical  symbolism — Moral  faith — 
Kant — Mill — Matthew  Arnold — A  literary  explanation  of  the 
Bible  substituted  for  a  literal  explanation. 

II.  Criticism  of  symbolic  faith — Inconsequence  of  liberal  Protes- 
tanism — Is  Jesus  of  a  more  divine  type  than  other  great  geni- 
uses— Does  the  Bible  possess  a  greater  authority  in  matters  of 
morals  than  any  other  masterpiece  of  poetry — Criticism  of 
Matthew  Arnold's  system — Final  absorption  of  religions  by 
morality. 

Every  illogical  position  being  in    its  nature   unstable,  the 

very   inconsequence    of    a  religion   obliges   it  to   a    perpetual 

evolution  in  the  direction  of  an  ultimate  non-re- 
Inevitable  tend-    ...  ....  ,         .  111 

ency  of  religion      ^'giori)  wliicli  it  approaches  incessantly  by  almost 

toward  non-  insensible  steps.     The  Protestant  knows  nothing 

religion. 

of  the  ordeal  of  a  Catholic  obliged  to  accept  every- 
thing or  to  reject  everything ;  he  knows  nothing  of  prodigious 
revolutions  and  subjective  coups  cVetat ;  he  possesses  instinc- 
tively the  art  of  transition,  his  credo  is  elastic.  There  are  so 
many  different  creeds,  each  a  little  more  thorough-going  than 
the  last,  that  he  may  pass  through,  that  he  has  time  to  habitu- 
ate his  spirit  to  the  truth  before  being  obliged  to  profess  it  in 
its  simplicity.  Protestantism  is  the  only  religion,  in  the  Occi- 
dent at  least,  in  which  it  is  possible  for  one  to  become  an  atheist 
unawares  and  without  having  done  one's  self  the  shadow  of  a 
violence  in  the  process  :  the  subjective  theism  of  Mr.  Moncure 
Conway,  for  example,  or  any  such  ultra-liberal  Unitarian  is 
so  near  a  neighbour  to  ideal  atheism  that  really  the  two  cannot 
be  told  apart,  and  yet  the  Unitarians,  who  as  a  matter  of  fact 
are  often  simply  free-thinkers,  hold,  so  to  speak,  that  they  still 

167 


i68      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

believe.  The  truth  is  that  an  affectionate  faith  long  retains 
its  charm,  even  after  one  is  persuaded  that  it  is  an  error  and 
dead  in  one  ;  one  caresses  the  lifeless  illusions  and  cannot 
bring  one's  self  altogether  to  abandon  them,  as  in  the  land  of 
the  Slavs  it  is  the  custom  to  kiss  the  pale  face  of  the  dead  in 
the  open  coffin  before  throwing  upon  it  the  handful  of  earth 
which  severs  definitely  the  last  visible  bonds  of  love. 

Long  before  Christianity,  other  great  religions,  Brahmanism 
and  Buddhism,  which  are  much  more  comprehensive  and  less* 
arrested  in  their  development,  followed  the  course 

Exemplified  in  -  ,       .         ,  i   •    i  i  •  ^   r    •   ^  ^ 

the  case  of  O'  cvolution  by  which  a  literal  faith  comes  to  be 

Brahmanism  transformed  into  a  symbolic  faith.  They  have  been 

and  Buddhism,  -i     i  •      i         •   i  i        •      i 

reconciled  successively  with  one  metaphysical  sys- 
tem after  another — a  process  which  has  been  inevitably  carried 
forward  with  a  fresh  impulse  under  the  English  rule.  To-day 
Sumangala,  the  Buddhist  high-priest  of  Colombo,  interprets 
in  a  symbolic  sense  the  at  once  profound  and  naive  doctrine 
of  the  transmigration  ;  he  pretends  to  reject  miracles.  Other  en- 
lightened Buddhists  freely  accept  modern  doctrines,  from  those 
of  Darwin  to  those  of  Spencer.  On  the  other  hand,  in  the  bosom 
of  Hinduism  there  has  grown  up  a  really  new  and  wholly 
theistical  religion,  that  of  the  Brahmaists.'  Ram  Mohum  Roy 
founded,  at  the  beginning  of  the  century,  a  very  deeply  sym- 
bolical and  wide-spread  faith  ;  his  successors  have  gone  the 
length,  with  Debendra  Nath  Tagore,  of  denying  the  authen- 
ticity even  of  the  very  texts  which  they  were  in  the  beginning 
most  concerned  to  interpret  mystically.  This  last  step  was 
taken  suddenly,  under  circumstances  which  it  is  worth  while 
to  detail,  because  they  sum  up  in  a  few  characteristic  strokes 
the  universal  history  of  religious  thought.  It  happened  about 
1S47.  '^^^^  disciples  of  Ram  Mohum  Roy,  the  Brahmaists, 
had  been  for  a  long  time  engaged  in  a  discussion  about  the 
Vedas,  and,  quite  as  in  the  case  of  our  liberal  Protestants, 
had  been  giving  especial  prominence  to  texts  in  which  they 
imagined  they  found  an  unmistakable  af^rmation  of  the  unity  of 
the  Godhead  ;  and  they  rid  themselves  of  all  concern  with 
the  passages  that  seemingly  contradicted  this  notion  by  deny- 
'  M.  Goblet  d'Alviella,  Evolution  religieuse  contemporaine. 


SYMBOLIC  AND  MORAL   FAITH.  169 

ing  their  authenticity.  Ultimately,  somewhat  alarmed  at 
their  own  progress,  they  sent  four  Pundits  to  Benares  to  col- 
late the  sacred  texts  :  it  was  in  Benares  that,  according  to  the 
tradition,  the  only  so-called  complete  and  authentic  manuscript 
was  preserved.  During  the  two  years  that  the  labour  of  the 
Pundits  covered,  the  Hindus  waited  for  the  truth  in  the 
same  spirit  that  the  Hebrews  had  done  at  the  foot  of  Sinai. 
Finally  the  authentic  version,  or  what  purported  to  be  such, 
was  brought  to  them ;  and  they  possessed  the  definitive 
formula  of  revelation.  Their  disappointment  was  great,  and 
they  took  the  matter  into  their  own  hands,  realizing  at  one 
blow  the  revolution  which  the  liberal  Protestants  are  pursuing 
gradually  in  the  bosom  of  Christianity :  they  rejected  defini- 
tively the  Vedas  and  the  antique  religion  of  the  Brahmans, 
and  proclaimed  in  its  stead  a  theistical  religion,  which  rests  in 
no  sense  whatsoever  upon  revelation.  The  new  faith  must  in 
time  develop,  not  without  heresy  and  schism,  but  its  adherents 
constitute  to-day  in  India  an  important  element  in  progress. 

In  our  days  very  estimable  persons  have  essayed  to  push 

Christianity  also  into  a  new  path.     In  according  the  right  of 

Preservation  of    interpretation  to  private  individuals,  Luther  gave 

the  letter  while      them  the  right  of  clothing  their  own  individual 

tampering  with  1  ,         •        ,        ,  r      ^ 

the  spirit  of  the  thoughts  in  the  language  of  the  antique  dogmas 
^^^^^'  and  the  texts  of   the    sacred  books.     Insomuch 

that  by  a  singular  revolution,  the  "  Word,"  which  was  considered 
in  the  beginning  as  the  faithful  expression  of  the  divine 
thought,  has  tended  to  become  for  each  of  us  the  expression  of 
our  own  personal  thought.  The  sense  of  the  words  depending 
really  upon  ourselves,  the  most  barbarous  language  can  be 
made  at  a  pinch  to  serve  us  for  the  conveyance  of  the  noblest 
ideas.  By  this  ingenious  expedient  texts  become  flexible, 
dogmas  become  acclimated  more  or  less  to  the  intellectual 
atmosphere  in  which  they  are  placed,  and  the  barbarism  of  the 
sacred  books  becomes  disguised.  By  virtue  of  living  with 
the  people  of  God  we  civilize  them,  we  lend  them  our  ideas, 
inoculate  them  with  our  aspirations,  everyone  interprets  the 
Bible  to  suit  himself,  and  the  result  is  that  the  commentary 
ultimately  overgrows  and  half  obscures  the  text  itself;  we  no 


I70      DISSOLUTIOX  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

longer  read  with  undimmed  vision — we  look  through  a  medium 

which  disguises  everything  that  is  hideous,  and  lends  a  fresh 

beauty  to  everything  that  is  beautiful.     At  bottom  the  veritable 

sacred  Word  is  no  longer  the  one  which  God  pronounced  and 

sent  forth  reverberating,  eternally  the  same,  down  the  centuries  ; 

it  is  the  one  which  we  pronounce  or  rather  whisper — for  is  it 

not  the  sense  which  one  puts  upon  it  that  constitutes  the  real 

value  of  an  utterance?  and  it  is  we  who  determine  the  sense. 

The  Divine  Spirit  has  passed  into  the  believer  and,  at  certain 

times  at  least,  the  true   God   would    seem   to  be   one's   own 

thought.     This  attempt  at  a    reconciliation  between  religion 

and  free-thought   is  a  masterpiece  of   tact.      Religion   seems 

always  to  lag  a  little  behind,  but  free-thought  by  exercise  of  a 

little  ingenuity  always  find   means,  in  the  end,  of  helping   it 

forward.      The   progress   of    the  two    consists   of  a   series  of 

arrangements,  compromises,  something  like  what  takes  place 

between  a  conservative  Senate  and  a  progressive  Chamber  of 

Deputies,  honestly  in  search  of  a  modus  vivendi. 

By  a  procedure  which  Luther  would  never  have  dared  to 

emulate   Protestants  have  taken  the   liberty  of  employing  on 

essential  dogmas  this  power  of  symbolical  inter- 
Extension  of  •  1   •    1      T         1  1     r  r 

symbolic interpre-  pretation   which   Luthcr  reserved   for  texts  of  a 

tation  to  essential  secondary  importance.  The  most  essential  of 
dogmas, 

dogmas,  that   upon   which    all   others  depend,  is 

the  dogma  of  revelation.  If,  since  Luther's  time,  an  orthodox 
Protestant  feels  himself  at  liberty  to  discuss  at  his  ease 
whether  the  sense  of  the  sacred  Word  is  really  this,  that,  or 
the  other,  he  never  for  an  instant  questions  whether  the  Word 
itself  is  really  sacred  in  effect,  or  whether  it  really  possesses 
any  meaning  that  can  properly  be  called  divine.  When  he 
holds  the  Bible  he  has  no  doubt  but  that  he  has  his  hand 
upon  the  truth ;  he  has  only  to  discover  it  beneath  the  words 
in  which  it  is  contained,  has  only  to  dig  for  it  in  the  sacred 
Book  as  a  labourer  might  dig  in  a  field  in  search  of  a  buried 
treasure.  But  is  it  then  quite  certain  that  the  treasure  is 
really  there,  that  the  truth  lies  ready-made  somewhere  be- 
tween the  covers  of  the  Book  ?  That  is  the  question  which 
the  liberal    Protestant  is   asking  himself,  and   he  has  already 


SYMBOLIC  AND   MORAL   FAITH.  171 

taken  possession  of  Germany,  of  England,  of  the  United 
States,  and  possesses  even  in  France  a  large  number  of 
representatives.  Previous  to  his  advent  all  Christians  were  at 
one  in  the  belief  that  the  sacred  Word  really  exists  somewhere  ; 
at  the  present  day  this  belief  itself  tends  to  become  symbolic. 
No  doubt  there  was  in  Jesus  a  certain  element  of  divinit}-,  but 
is  there  not  in  all  of  us,  in  one  sense  or  another,  a  certain  ele- 
ment of  divinity  ?  "Why  should  we  be  surprised,"  writes  a 
liberal  clergyman,  "  at  finding  Jesus  a  mystery,  when  we  arc  all 
of  us  ourselves  a  mystery  ?  "  According  to  the  new  Protestants 
there  is  no  longer  any  reason  for  taking  anything  at  its  face 
value,  not  even  what  has  hitherto  been  considered  as  the  spirit 
of  Christianity.  For  the  most  logical  of  them,  the  Bible  is 
scarcely  more  than  a  book  like  another;  custom  has  conse- 
crated it;  one  may  find  God  in  it  if  one  seeks  Him  there, 
because  one  may  find  God  anywhere  and  put  Mim  there,  if  by 
chance  Hebe  really  not  there  already.  The  divine  halo  has 
dropped  from  Christ's  head,  or  rather  he  shares  it  with  all  the 
angels  and  all  the  saints.  He  has  lost  his  celestial  purity  or 
rather  we  share  it  with  him,  all  of  us  ;  for  is  not  original  sin 
also  a  symbol,  and  are  we  not  all  of  us  born  innocent  sons  of 
God?  The  miracles  are  but  fresh  symbols  which  represent, 
grossly  and  visibly,  the  subjective  power  of  faith.  We  are  no 
longer  to  look  for  orders  directly  from  God  ;  God  no  longer 
talks  to  us  by  a  single  voice,  but  by  all  the  voices  of  the 
universe,  and  it  is  in  the  midst  of  the  great  concert  of  nature 
that  we  must  seize  and  distinguish  the  veritable  Word.  All 
is  symbolic  except  God,  who  is  the  eternal  truth. 

Well,  and  why  stop  at  God  ?     Liberty  of  thought,  which  has 
been  incessantly  turning  and  adapting  dogma  to  its  progress, 

has  it  in  its  power  to  make  a  step  beyond. 
concfpt'InVfVo^d'   Immutable  faith  is  hemmed  in  by  a  circle  which 

is  daily  shrinking.  For  the  liberal  Protestant  this 
contraction  has  reached  its  extreme,  and  centre  and  circum- 
ference are  one  and  the  process  is  continuing.  Why  should 
not  God  Himself  be  a  symbol  ?  What  is  this  mysterious  Being, 
after  all,  but  a  popular  personification  of  the  divine  or  even 
of  ideal  humanity ;  in  a  word,  of  morality  ? 


172      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

Thus  a  purely  moral  symbolism  comes  in  process  of  time 

to    be    substituted    for    a    metaphysical   symbolism.     We  are 

The  result  prac-  close  upon  the  Kantian  conception  of  a  religion 

tically  a  religion    of  duty,  resting  upon  a  simple  postulate  or  even 

of  morals.    Per-  .  i 

ceived  to  be  so  in    a    Simple    generalization    of    human    conduct,  to 
Germany.  ^\^^  effect  that  morality  and  happiness  are  in  the 

last  resort  in  harmony.  A  faith  in  morals,  thus  understood, 
has  been  adopted  by  many  Germans  as  the  basis  of  religious 
faith.  Hegelians  have  converted  religion  into  a  moral  sym-' 
bolism.  Strauss  defines  morality  as  the  "  harmonization  "  of 
man  with  his  species,  and  defines  religion  as  the  harmoni- 
zation of  man  with  the  universe ;  and  these  definitions,  which 
seem  at  first  sight  to  imply  a  difference  in  extent  and  a  certain 
opposition  between  morality  and  religion,  aim  in  reality  at 
showing  their  ultimate  unity ;  the  ideal  of  the  species  and  the 
purpose  of  the  universe  are  one,  and  if  by  chance  they  should 
be  distinct,  it  would  be  the  more  universal  ideal  that  morality 
itself  would  command  us  to  follow.  Von  Hartmann,  also, 
in  spite  of  his  mystical  tendencies,  concludes  that  there  is  no 
religion  possible  except  one  which  will  consecrate  the  moral 
autonomy  of  the  individual,  his  salvation  by  his  own  effort 
and  not  by  that  of  somebody  else  (autosoterism  as  distin- 
guished from  heterosoterism).  From  which  it  follows  that,  in 
Von  Hartmann's  opinion,  the  essence  of  religious  adoration 
and  gratitude  should  be  one's  respect  for  the  essential  and 
impersonal  element  in  one's  self ;  in  other  words,  piety  is, 
properly  speaking,  no  more  than  a  form  of  morality  and  of 
absolute  renouncement. 

In   France,  as  is  well   known,   M.  Renouvier  follows   Kant 

and  bases  religion    upon   morality.     M.  Renan  also  makes  of 

religion    a    little    more  than    an    ideal    morality : 

Also  in  a  Abnegation,  devotion,  sacrifice  of  the  real  to  the 

ideal,  such,"   he    says,    "is    the  very  essence    of 

religion."     And  elsewhere :    "  What    is  the  state  but  egoism 

organized?  what    is    religion  but    devotion   organized?"     M. 

Renan   forgets,  however,  that  a  purely  egoistic   state,  that  is 

to   say  a  purely   immoral  state,  could    not  continue   to  exist. 

It    would  be    more    accurate  to  say  that  the  state  is  justice 


SYMBOLIC  AND  MORAL   FAITH.  173 

organized  ;  and  since  justice  and  devotion  are  in  principle  the 
same,  it  follows  that  the  state  as  well  as  religion  rests  ulti- 
mately upon  morality:  morality  is  the  very  foundation  of 
social    life. 

In  England,  also,  the  same  process  of  the  transformation  of 

a  religious  faith  into  a  purely  moral  faith  may  be  observed. 

Kant   through   the   intermediation   of    Coleridge 

Also  m  ^     £  Hamilton  has  exercised  a  great  influence 

England.  ° 

upon  English  thought  and  upon  the  course  of 
this  transformation.  Coleridge  brought  down  the  Kingdom 
of  God  from  Heaven  and  domesticated  it  upon  earth  ;  the 
reign  of  God  for  him,  as  for  Kant,  became  that  of  morality. 
For  John  Stuart  Mill,  whose  point  of  approach  was  widely  dif- 
ferent from  that  of  Coleridge,  the  outcome  of  the  study  of 
religions  was  the  same — that  their  essential  value  has  always 
consisted  in  the  moral  precepts  they  inculcate  ;  the  good  that 
they  have  done  should  be  attributed  rather  to  the  stimulus 
they  have  given  to  the  moral  sentiment  than  to  the  religious 
sentiment  properly  so  called.  And  it  is  to  be  added,  Mill 
says,  that  the  moral  principles  furnished  by  religions  labour 
under  this  double  disability,  that  (i)  they  are  tainted  with 
selfishness,  and  operate  upon  the  individual  by  promises  or 
menaces  relating  to  the  life  to  come  without  entirely  detach- 
ing him  from  a  preoccupation  with  his  own  interest,  and,  (2) 
they  produce  a  certain  intellectual  apathy,  and  even  an  aber- 
ration of  the  moral  sense,  in  that  they  attribute  to  an  abso- 
lutely perfect  being  the  creation  of  a  world  so  imperfect  as 
our  own,  and  thus  in  a  certain  measure  cloak  evil  itself  in 
divinity.  Nobody  could  adore  such  a  god  willingly  without 
having  undergone  a  preliminary  process  of  degeneration. 
The  true  religion  of  the  future,  according  to  John  Stuart  Mill, 
will  be  an  elevated  moral  doctrine,  going  beyond  an  egoistic 
utilitarianism  and  encouraging  us  to  pursue  the  good  of 
humanity  in  general ;  nay,  even  of  sentient  beings  in  general. 
This  conception  of  a  religion  of  humanity,  which  is  not  with- 
out analogy  to  the  Positivist  conception,  might  be  reconciled, 
John  Stuart  Mill  adds,  with  the  belief  in  a  divine  power — a 
principle  of  goodness  present  in  the  universe.    A  faith  in  God 


174      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

is  immoral  only  when  it  supposes  God  to  be  omnipotent, 
since  it,  in  that  case,  charges  him  with  responsibility  for  exist- 
ing evil.  A  good  god  can  exist  only  on  condition  that  he  is 
less  than  omnipotent,  that  he  encounters  in  nature,  nay  in 
human  nature,  obstacles  which  hinder  him  from  effecting  the 
good  that  he  desires.  Once  conceive  God  thus,  and  the  formula 
of  duty  reads  simply:  Help  God;  work  with  Him  for  the 
production  of  what  is  good,  lend  Him  the  concurrence  that  He 
really  needs  since  He  is  not  omnipotent.  Labour  also  with  all 
great  men— all  men  like  Socrates,  Moses,  Marcus  Aurelius, 
Washington — do  as  they  do,  all  that  you  can  and  ought  to  do. 
This  disinterested  collaboration  on  the  part  of  all  men  with 
each  other  and  with  the  principle  of  goodness,  in  whatsoever 
manner  that  principle  may  be  conceived  or  personified,  will 
be,  in  John  Stuart  Mill's  judgment,  the  ultimate  religion. 
And  it  is  evidently  no  more  than  a  magnified  system  of  mo- 
rality, erected  into  a  universal  law  for  the  world.  What  is  it 
that  we  call  the  divine,  except  this  that  is  the  best  in  our- 
selves ?  "  God  is  good,"  cried  Feuerbach,  "  signifies  :  good- 
ness is  divine;  God  is  just  signifies:  justice  is  divine."  In- 
stead of  saying  :  there  have  been  divine  agonies,  divine  deaths, 
one  has  said,  God  has  suffered,  God  has  died.  "  God  is  the 
apotheosis  of  the  heart  of  man."  ' 

An  analogous  thesis  is  maintained  with  great  cleverness  in  a 

book  which  caused  considerable  stir  in  England  :  Mr.  Matthew 

„    ^      ,         Arnold's  "  Literature  and  Dogma."     The  author, 

Matthew  Ar-  ° 

Hold's " Literature   in  common  with  religious critics  generally,  remarks 

and  Dogma."  ^j^^  growing  tension  that  nowadays  exists  between 
science  and  dogma.  "  An  inevitable  revolution,  of  which  we 
all  recognize  the  beginnings  and  signs,  but  which  has  already 
spread,  perhaps,  farther  than  most  of  us  think,  is  befalling  the 
religion  in  which  we  have  been  brought  up."  Mr.  Arnold  is 
right.  At  no  former  period  have  unbelievers  appeared  to 
have    so    strong  a   hold  in   right   reason ;  the  old  arguments 

'  Mr.  Seeley,  in  his  work  entitled  N'atural  Religion  (1882),  takes  pains  to  estab- 
lish that  of  the  three  elements  which  compose  the  religious  idea — the  love  of  truth 
or  science,  the  sentiment  of  beauty  or  art,  the  notion  of  duty  or  morals — it  is  the 
last  only  that  can  to-day  be  reconciled  with  Christianity. 


SYMBOLIC  A.VD  MORAL   FAITH.  175 

against  providence,  miracles,  and  final  causes,  that  the    Epicu- 
reans brought   into   prominence,   seem  as  nothing  beside  the 
arguments  furnished  in  our  days  by  the  Laplaces  and  the  La- 
marcks,  and  quite  recently  by  Darwin,  the  "  evictor  of  mira- 
cles," in  Strauss'  phrase.     One  of  the  sacred  prophets  whom 
Mr.  Arnold  is  fond  of  quoting  once  said  :     "  Behold,  the  days 
come,  that  I  will  send  a  famine  in  the  land,  not  a  famine  of 
bread,  nor  a  thirst  for  water,  but  of  hearing  the  words  of  the 
Lord  :  and  they  shall  wander  from  sea  to  sea,  and  from  the 
north    even  to  the  east,  they  shall  run  to   and    fro    to    seek 
the  word  of  the  Lord,  and  shall  not  find  it."     The  time  pre- 
dicted by  the  prophet  Mr.  Arnold  might  well  recognize    as 
our  own  ;  might  it  not  with  truth  be  said  of  the  present  that 
it  lacks  the  word  of  the  Eternal,  or  soon  will  lack  it  ?     A  new 
spirit  animates  our  generation  ;  not  only   are    we    in    doubt 
whether  the  Eternal  ever  did  speak  or  ever  does  speak  to  man, 
but  many  of  us  believe  in  the  existence  of  no  other  eternity 
than  that  of  a  universe  of  mute  and  unfeeling  matter  which 
keeps  its  own  secret  except  as  against  those  who  have  the  wit 
to  find  it   out.     There   are  of  course,   even  to-day,  some  few 
faithful  servants  in  the  houses  of  the  Lord  ;  but  the  Master 
seems  to  have  departed  for  the  far  countries  of  the  past,  to  which 
memory  alone  has  access.     In  Russia  in  the  older  seigniorial 
estates,  a  disc  of  iron  is  fastened   to   the  wall   of  the  mansion 
of  the  lord  of  the  soil ;  and  when  he  returns  from  a  journey,  the 
first  night  he  passes  in  his  dominion,  some  follower  runs  to 
.    the  disc  of  iron   and   in   the  silence  of  the  night  beats  upon 
the  metal  to  announce  his  vigilance  and  the  presence  of  the 
master.     Who  will  awaken  nowadays  the  voice  of  the  bells  in 
the  church-steeples  to  announce  the  return  to  His  temple  of 
the  living  God,  and  the  vigilance  of  the  faithful?     To-day  the 
sound  of  the  church-bells  is  as  melancholy  as  a    cry  in    the 
void  ;  they  tell  of  the  deserted  house  of  God,  of  the  absence  of 
the  lord  of  the  soil,  they  sound  the  knell  of  the  believers.    And 
is  there  nothing  that  can  be  done  to  domesticate  religion  once 
more  in  the  heart  of  man  ?     There  is  but  one  means  :  to  see  in 
God  no  more  than  a  symbol  of  what  exists  always  at  the  bot- 
tom of  the  human  heart— morality.     And  it  is  to  this  expedi- 


176      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

cut  that  Matthew  Arnold  also  turns  his  attention.  But  he  is 
not  content  with  a  purely  philosophic  system  of  morals,  he 
aims  at  the  preservation  of  religion,  and  in  especial  of  the 
Christian  religion  ;  and  to  that  end  he  brings  forward  a  new 
method  of  interpretation,  the  literary  and  aesthetic  method, 
the  purpose  of  which  is  to  glean  from  the  sacred  texts  what- 
ever they  may  contain  of  moral  beauty,  in  the  hope  that  it 
may  incidentally  prove  to  contain  also  what  is  true.  It  aims  at 
reconstructing  the  primitive  notions  of  Christianity,  in  whatso- 
ever they  possessed  of  vagueness,  of  indecision,  and  at  the 
same  time  of  profundity,  and  to  set  them  in  opposition  over 
against  the  gross  precision  of  popular  views.  In  matters  of 
metaphysic  or  religion  there  is  nothing  more  absurd  than  an 
excessive  precision  ;  the  truth  in  such  matters  is  not  to  be 
rounded  in  an  epigram.  Epigram  can  at  best  serve,  not  as  a 
definition,  but  as  a  suggestion  of  the  infinities  that  it  really 
does  not  circumscribe.  And  just  as  the  verity  in  such  matters 
overpasses  the  measure  of  language,  so  it  overpasses  the  per- 
sonalities and  the  figures  which  humanity  has  chosen  as  repre- 
sentative of  it.  When  an  idea  is  powerfully  conceived,  it  tends 
to  become  definite,  to  take  unto  itself  a  visage,  a  voice  ;  our 
ears  seem  to  hear  and  our  eyes  to  see  what  our  hearts  feel. 
"Man  never  knows,"  said  Goethe,  "how  anthropomorphic 
he  is."  What  is  there  so  surprising  in  the  fact  that  humanity 
has  personified  that  which  in  all  climes  claimed  its  allegiance 
— the  idea  of  goodness  and  of  justice?  The  Eternal,  the  eter- 
nally Just,  the  Omnipotent  who  squares  reality  with  justice,  He 
who  parcels  out  evil  and  good,  the  Being  who  weighs  all  actions, 
who  does  all  things  by  weight  and  measure,  or  rather  who 
is  Himself  weight  and  measure — tJiat  is  the  God  of  the  Jewish 
people,  the  Javeh  of  adult  Judaism,  as  He  ultimately  appears 
in  the  mist  of  the  unknown.  In  our  days  He  has  become 
transmuted  into  a  simple  moral  conception,  which,  having  for- 
cibly taken  possession  of  the  human  mind,  has  at  last  clothed 
itself  in  a  mystical  form — has  become  personified  by  alliance 
with  a  crowd  of  superstitions  that  the  "  false  science  of  theo- 
logians "  regards  as  inseparable  from  it  and  from  which  a  more 
delicately  discriminating  interpretation— an  interpretation  more 


SYMBOLIC  AND  MORAL   FALTH.  i'}'] 


literary  and  less  literal — should  set  it  free.  God  having  be- 
come one  with  the  moral  law,  a  further  step  may  be  taken  ; 
one  may  regard  Christ  who  immolated  Himself  to  save  the 
world  as  a  moral  symbol  of  self-sacrifice,  as  the  sublime  t}-pe 
in  which  we  find  united  all  the  suffering  of  human  life  and  all 
the  ideal  grandeur  of  morality.  In  His  figure  the  human  and 
the  divine  are  reconciled.  He  was  a  man,  for  He  suffered, 
but  His  devotion  was  so  great  that  He  was  a  god.  And  what 
then  is  that  Heaven  which  is  reserved  for  those  who  follow 
Christ  and  walk  in  the  path  of  self-sacrifice?  It  is  moral  per- 
fection. Hell  is  the  symbol  of  that  depth  of  corruption  to 
which,  by  hypothesis,  they  will  fall  who,  by  a  persistent  choice 
of  evil,  ultimately  lose  all  notion  even  of  goodness.  The  ter- 
restrial paradise  is  a  charming  symbol  for  the  primitive  inno- 
cence of  the  child  :  he  has  done  as  yet  no  evil,  he  has  done 
as  yet  no  good  ;  his  earliest  disobedience  is  his  first  sin  ;  when 
desire  is  awakened  in  him  for  the  first  time,  his  will  has  been 
conquered,  he  has  fallen,  but  this  fall  is  precisely  the  condition 
of  his  being  set  upon  his  feet  again,  of  his  redemption  by  the 
moral  law  ;  behold  him  condemned  to  labour,  to  the  hard  labour 
of  man  upon  himself,  to  the  struggle  of  self-mastery  ;  without 
that  contest  to  strengthen  him  he  would  never  see  the  god  de- 
scend in  him,  Christ  the  Saviour,  the  moral  ideal.  Thus  it  is 
in  the  evolution  of  the  human  conscience  that  a  key  to  human 
symbolism  must  be  found.'  Of  them  must  be  said  what  the 
philosopher  Sallust  said  of  religious  legends  generally  in  his 
treatise  "  On  the  Gods  and  the  World  ":  Such  things  have 
never  happened,  but  they  are  eternally  true.  Religion  is  the 
morality  of  the  people;  it  shows  to  them,  realized  and  divinized, 
the  higher  types  of  conduct  which  they  should  force  them- 
selves to  imitate  here  below;  the  dreams  with  which  it  peoples 
the  skies  are  dreams  of  justice,  of  equality  of  goods,  of  fra- 
ternity :  Heaven  pays  for  earth.  Let  us  then  no  longer  employ 
the  names  of  God,  of  Christ,  of  the  Resurrection  except  as  sym- 
bols, vague  as  hope  itself.  Then,  according  to  Mr.  Matthew 
Arnold,  and  those  who  maintain  the  same  thesis,  we  shall  be- 

'  Besides  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  consult  M.  L.  Menard,  Sources  dndognie  Chretien 
{Critique  religieuse,  Janvier,  1879). 


I  78      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

gin  to  love  these  symbols,  our  faith  will  find  a  resting  place  in 
the  religion  which  before  seemed  to  be  but  a  tissue  of  gross 
absurdities.     Beneath   dogma,  which    is    but   the   surface,  we 
shall  find  the  moral  law,  which  is  the  substance.    This  law,  it  is 
true,   has   in   religion   become   concrete  ;  it  has,  so  to  speak, 
taken  on  colour  and  form.     That,  however,  is  simply  owing  to 
the  fact  that  people  are  poets  ;  they  think  in  images  or  not  at 
all.   You  can  only  attract  their  attention  by  pointing  your  finger 
at  something.     After  all,  what  harm  is  there  in  the  fact  that 
the   apostles,   opening     the    blue    ether,    showed    the    gaping 
nations   of  the  earth  the  thrones   of   gold  and   seraphim  and 
white  wings,  and  the  kneeling  multitude  of  the  elect  ?     This 
spectacle  fascinated  the  Middle  Age,  and  at  times,  when  we 
shut  our  eyes,  we  seem  to  see  it  still.    This  poetry,  spread  upon 
the  surface  of  the  moral  law,  lends  it  an  attractiveness  that  it 
did  not  possess  in  its  bare  austerity.    Sacrifice  becomes  less  dif- 
ficult when  it  presents  itself  crowned  with  a  halo.     The  early 
Christians  were  not  fond   of  representing  Christ  as  bleeding 
under  the  crown  of  thorns,  but  as  transfigured  and  triumphant ; 
they  preferred  to  keep  his  agony  in  the  background.     Such 
pictures  as   ornament  our  Churches   would  have   filled   them 
with  horror  ;  their  young  faith  would  have  been  shaken  by  the 
image  of  the  "  agony  upon  the  cross,"  which  caused  Goethe 
also  a  sort  of  a  repugnance.    When  they  represented  the  cross 
it  was  no  longer  burdened  with  the  God,  and  they  took  care 
even   to  cover  it   with  flowers  and  ornaments  of  every  kind. 
You  may  see  it  in  the  rude  figures,  the  designs  and  sculptures 
found  in  the  catacombs.     To  hide  the  cross  beneath  an  arm- 
ful of  flowers  is  precisely  the  marvel  realized  by  religion.    And 
when  religions  are  regarded  from  this  point  of  view,  all  ground 
vanishes  for  looking  with  disdain  upon  the  legends  which  con- 
stitute the   material  of  popular  faith.     They  become  compre- 
hensible, they  become  lovable,  one  feels  one's  self  enveloped  in 
an  "  infinite  tenderness  "  for  this  spontaneous  product  of  naive 
thought  in  quest  of  goodness,  in  pursuit  of  the  ideal,  for  these 
fairy-tales  of  human  morality,  profounder  and  sweeter   than 
all  other  fairy-tales.     It  was   necessary  that  religious  poetry 
should  prepare  the  earth  long  beforehand  for  the  coming  of 


SYMBOLIC  AND   MORAL   FAITH.  179 

the  mysterious  ideal ;  should  embellish  the  place  where  it  was 
to  descend,  as  the  mother  of  the  Sleeping  Beauty,  seeing  the 
eyes  of  her  daughter  grow  heavy  with  the  sleep  of  a  hundred 
years,  placed  with  confidence  at  the  side  of  the  bed  the  em- 
broidered cushion,  on  which  the  enamoured  prince  would  one 
day  kneel  to  reawaken  her  with  a  kiss. 

We  have  come  a  long  way  in  all  this  from  the  servile  inter- 
pretation of  the  blind  leaders  who  fasten  upon  particular  texts 

and  lose  sight  of  their  subject  as  a  whole.  If  one 
reUgions'tobe  approaches  a  picture  too  near,  the  perspective 
regarded  his-  disappears  and  all  the  colours  lose  their  proper 

value ;  one  must  stand  back  a  certain  distance 
and  see  it  in  a  favourable  light:  and  then  alone  the  richness  of 
the  colours  and  the  unity  of  the  work  appear.  Religions 
must  be  looked  upon  in  the  same  way.  If  the  spectator  stands 
sufficiently  above  them  and  aloof  from  them,  he  loses  all 
prejudice,  all  hostility,  in  respect  to  them;  their  sacred  books 
come  even  in  time  to  merit  in  his  eyes  the  name  of  sacred, 
and  he  finds  in  them,  Mr.  Arnold  says,  a  providential  "  secret," 
which  is  the  "secret  of  Jesus."  Why  not  recognize,  adds  Mr. 
Arnold,  that  the  Bible  is  an  inspired  book,  dictated  by  the 
Holy  Spirit?  After  all,  everything  that  is  spontaneous  is 
more  or  less  divine,  providential ;  whatever  springs  from  the 
very  sources  of  human  thought  is  infinitely  venerable.  The 
Bible  is  a  unique  book,  corresponding  to  a  peculiar  state  of 
mind,  and  it  can  no  more  be  made  over  or  corrected  than  a 
work  of  Phidias  or  Praxiteles.  In  spite  of  its  moral  lapses 
and  its  frequent  disaccord  with  the  conscience  of  our  epoch,  it 
is  a  necessary  complement  of  Christianity;  it  manifests  the 
spirit  of  Christian  society,  it  represents  the  tradition  of  it,  and 
attaches  the  beliefs  of  the  present  to  those  of  the  past.'  The 
Bible  and  the  dogmas  of  the  Church,  having  been  formerly 
the  point  of  departure  for  religious  belief,  have  come  nowa- 
days, no  doubt,  in  the  face  of  modern  faith,  to  be  in  need  of 
justification  ;  and  this  justification  they  will  obtain  ;  to  be 
understood  is  itself  to  be  forgiven. 

If  the  New  Testament  contains  at  all  a  more  or  less  reflect- 

'.See  M.  L.  Menard,  ibid.     {Crit.  relig.,  1879.) 


I  So      DISSOLUTlO.y  OF  RELIGIOiVS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

ivc   moral  theory,   it    is   assuredly  that    of  love.     Charity,  or 

rather  affectionate  justice  (charity  is  always  justice,  absolutely 

The  moral  doc-    considered),  such  is  the  "secret  "  of  Jesus.     The 

trine  of  the  New  New  Testament  may  then  be  considered,  accord- 
Testament  the  .  ,  .      .  r     T\  T  A  T        .  1  A  11 

main  Strength  mg  to  the  Opinion  of  J\lr.  Matthew  Arnold,  as 
of  Christianity.  before  all  else  a  treatise  on  symbolical  morality. 
The  actual  superiority  of  the  New  Testament,  as  compared  with 
Paganism  and  with  pagan  philosophy,  is  a  moral  superiority ; 
therein  lay  the  secret  of  its  success.  There  is  no  theology  in' 
the  New  Testament  unless  it  be  the  Jewish  theology,  and  the 
Jewish  theology  had  proved  itself  incapable  of  the  conquest 
of  the  world.  The  power  of  the  New  Testament  lay  in  its 
morality,  and  it  is  its  morality  which  even  in  our  times  survives 
still,  more  or  less  transformed  by  modern  progress.  And  it  is 
upon  the  morality  of  the  New  Testament  that  modern  Chris- 
tian societies  must  of  necessity  lean,  it  is  in  the  morality  of  the 
New  Testament  that  they  will  find  their  true  strength  ;  the 
morality  of  the  New  Testament  is  the  principal  argument  that 
they  can  invoke  in  proof  of  the  legitimacy  of  religion  itself 
and,  so  to  speak,  of  God. 

Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  and  the  group  of  liberal  critics,  who, 
like  him,  are   inspired  by  the    spirit    of    the    age  {Zeitgeist), 

T    .   ,     ^         seem  thus  to  have  guided  faith  to  the  ultimate 
Logical  out-  ° 

come  of  Matthew  point  beyond  which  nothing  remains  but  to 
Arnold's  position.    ^^^^^    definitively  with    the   past    and   its    texts 

and    dogmas. 

Religious  thought  in  these  pages  is  bound  by  the  slenderest 
threads  to  religious  symbolism.  At  bottom,  if  one  looks  close, 
liberal  Christians  suppress  religion,  properly  so  called,  and 
substitute  a  religious  morality  in  its  stead.  The  believer  of 
other  times  affirmed  the  existence  of  God  first,  and  then  made 
His  will  the  rule  of  conduct ;  the  liberal  believer  of  our  day 
af^rms  the  existence,  first  of  all,  of  the  moral  law,  and  cloaks 
it  in  divinity  afterward.  He,  like  Matthew  Arnold,  treats 
with  Javeh  on  equal  terms,  and  speaks  to  Him  almost  as 
follows:  "Art  Thou  a  person?  I  do  not  know.  Hast  Thou 
had  prophets,  a  Messiah  ?  I  no  longer  believe  so.  Hast  Thou 
created  me?     I  doubt  it.     Dost  Thou  watch  over  me — me  in 


SYMBOLIC  AND  MORAL   FAITH.  i8i 

especial — dost  Thou  perform  miracles  ?  I  deny  it.  But  there 
is  one  thing,  and  one  alone,  in  which  I  do  believe,  and  that  is 
in  my  own  conception  of  morality ;  and  if  Thou  art  willing  to 
become  a  surety  for  that  and  to  bend  the  reality  into  harmony 
with  my  ideal,  we  will  make  a  treaty  of  alliance  ;  and  by  the 
affirmation  of  my  existence  as  a  moral  being,  I  will  affirm  Thine 
into  the  bargain."  We  are  far  away  from  the  antique  Javch, 
the  Power,  with  whom  no  bargain  could  be  made  ;  the  jealous 
God,  who  Avished  man's  every  thought  to  point  toward  Him 
alone,  and  who  would  make  no  treaty  with  His  people  unless 
He  could  precisely  dictate  the  terms. 

The  more  distinguished    German,    English,  and   American 
clergymen    thrust    theology   so   far  into   the  background    for 

Practical  atten  ^^^^  purpose  of  forwarding  practical  morality 
nation  of  Christian  that  one  may  apply  to  all  of  them  the  words 
^^   '  of  an  American  periodical,  the  NortJi  American 

Revierv  :  that  a  pagan,  desirous  of  making  himself  acquainted 
with  the  doctrines  of  Christianity,  might  frequent  our  most 
fashionable  churches  for  an  entire  year  and  not  hear  one 
word  about  the  torments  of  hell  or  the  wrath  of  an  in- 
censed God.  As  to  the  fall  of  man  and  the  expiatory  agony 
of  Christ,  just  so  much  would  be  said  as  to  fall  short  of  giving 
umbrage  to  the  most  fanatical  believer  of  the  theory  of  evolu- 
tion. Listening  and  observing  for  himself,  he  would  reach 
the  conclusion  that  the  way  to  salvation  lies  in  confessing  one's 
belief  in  certain  abstract  doctrines,  beaten  out  as  thin  as  possi- 
ble by  the  clergyman  and  by  the  believer,  in  frequenting 
assiduously  the  church  and  extra-religious  meetings,  in  droj)- 
ping  an  obolus  every  Sunday  into  the  contribution  box,  and 
in  imitating  the  attitudes  of  his  neighbours.  All  the  terms  of 
theology  are  so  loosely  employed  that  all  those  are  considered 
Christians  whose  character  has  been  formed  by  Christian  civ- 
ilization, all  those  who  have  not  remained  total  strangers  to 
the  current  of  ideas  set  up  in  the  Occident  b}^  Jesus  and  Paul. 
It  was  an  American  clergyman  who  had  abandoned  the  narrow 
■dogmas  of  Calvin  '  that,  after  having  employed  a  long  life  in 
becoming  more  and  more  liberal,  discovered,  in  his  seventieth 
year,  this  large  formula  for  his  faith  :  "  Nobody  ought  to  be 

'  Mr.  Ilciirv  Waid  Beecher. 


1 82      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

regarded  as  an  infidel  who  sees  in  justice  the  great  creed  of 
human  Hfe,  and  who  aims  at  an  increasingly  complete  subjec- 
tion of  his  will  to  his  moral  sense." 

II.  What  is  the  possible  value  and  the  possible  duration  of 
this  moral  and  metaphysical  symbolism  to  which  it  is  being 
attempted  to  reduce  religion  ? 

Let  us  speak  first  of  the  liberal  Protestants.  Liberal  Prot- 
estantism, which  resolves  the  very  dogmas  of  its  creed  into 
mere  symbols,  stands  no  doubt  in  the  scale  of 

Logical  hollow-  .        ,  ,  ,      .  ,  ,       , 

ness  of  the  position  progress  m  about  the  same  relation  to  orthodox 
of  the  liberal         Protestantism  as  the  latter   does   in   relation  to 

p  ytrt 4- g  Q  +  o  Ti +g 

Catholicism.  But  far  as  it  seems  in  advance  of 
them  from  the  point  of  view  of  morals  and  society,  it  is  inferior 
to  them  in  logic.  Catholicism  has  been  irreverently  called  a 
perfectly  embalmed  corpse,  a  Christian  mummy,  in  an  admi- 
rable state  of  preservation  beneath  the  cold  embroidered 
chasubles  and  surplices  which  envelop  it ;  Luther's  Protes- 
tantism tears  the  body  to  shreds,  liberal  Protestantism  reduces 
it  to  dust.  To  preserve  Christianity  while  suppressing  Christ 
the  son,  or  at  least  the  messenger  of  God,  is  an  undertaking  of 
which  they  alone  will  be  capable  who  are  little  disposed  to 
make  much  of  what  is  known  as  logic.  Whoever  does  not 
believe  in  Revelation  ought  frankly  to  confess  himself  a  phi- 
losopher, and  to  hold  the  Bible  and  the  New  Testament  as  lit- 
tle authoritative  as  the  dialogues  of  Plato,  or  the  treatises  of 
Aristotle,  or  the  Vedas,  or  the  Talmud.  Liberal  Protestants,  as 
Herr  von  Hartmann,  one  of  their  bitterest  adversaries,  remarks, 
seize  upon  the  whole  body  of  modern  ideas  and  label  them 
Christianity.  The  process  is  not  very  consistent.  If  you  are 
absolutely  determined  to  rally  round  a  flag,  let  it  at  least  be 
your  own.  But  the  liberal  Protestants  wish,  and  honestly,  to 
be  and  to  remain  Protestants  ;  in  Germany,  they  obstinately 
remain  in  the  United  Evangelical  Church  of  Prussia,  where 
they  about  as  truly  belong  as  a  sparrow  does  in  the  nest  of  a 
swallow.  Herr  von  Hartmann,  whose  zeal  against  them  is  un- 
flagging, compares  them  to  a  man  whose  house  is  riven  in  many 
places  and  going  to  ruin,  and  who  perceives  and  does  all  that 
in  him  lies-still  further  to  shatter  it,  and  continues,  nevertheless, 


SYMBOLIC  AND  MORAL  FAITH.  183 

tranquilly  to  sleep  in  it  and  even  to  call  in  passers-by  and  offer 
them  board  and  lodgin<;.  Or  again — always  according  to  Herr 
von  Hartmann — they  are  like  a  man  who  should  seat  himself 
in  perfect  confidence  upon  a  chair  after  having  first  sawed 
through  all  four  legs  of  it.  Strauss  had  already  said  :  "The 
instant  that  Jesus  is  regarded  as  no  more  than  a  man,  one  has 
no  longer  any  right  to  pray  to  him,  to  retain  him  as  the  centre 
of  a  cult,  to  preach  the  whole  year  through  on  him,  on  his 
actions,  on  his  adventures  and  maxims  ;  in  especial,  if  the  more 
important  of  his  adventures  and  actions  have  been  recog- 
nized as  fabulous,  and  if  his  maxims  are  demonstrably  incom- 
patible with  our  present  views  on  human  life  and  the  world." 
To  understand  what  is  peculiar  in  the  majority  of  liberal 
communions  which  always  stop  halfway,  it  is  necessary  to  ob- 
serve that  they  are  generally  the  work  of  ecclesiastics  who 
have  broken  with  the  dominant  church,  and  that  they  preserve 
to  the  end  some  suggestion  of  their  former  belief ;  they  can  no 
more  think,  except  in  the  terms  of  the  formulse  of  some  dogma, 
than  we  can  speak  in  the  words  of  a  language  with  which  we 
are  unacquainted  ;  and  even  when  they  endeavour  to  acquire 
a  new  language  they  speak  it  always  with  an  accent  which 
betrays  their  nationality.  For  the  rest  they  feel  instinctively 
that  the  name  of  Christ  lends  them  a  certain  authority,  and 
they  find  it  impossible  to  abandon  their  profession  and  its 
emoluments.  In  Germany,  and  even  in  France,  over  and  above 
the  liberal  Protestants,  who  in  the  latter  place  are  few  in  num- 
ber, former  Catholics  have  sought  to  abandon  orthodox 
Catholicism,  but  they  have  not  dared  to  abandon  Christianity. 
The  case  of  Father  Hyacinthe  '  is  sufficiently  well  known.  It 
is  in  vain  for  those  who  are  born  Christians  to  try  their  hand 
at  losfic,  and  to  make  an  effort  to  rid  themselves  of  their  faith. 
They  make  one  think,  in  spite  of  one's  self,  of  a  fly  caught  in  a 

'  Dr.  Jiinqua,  whose  name  almost  became  celebrated  a  few  years  ago,  also  tried 
to  found  a  church,  the  Church  of  Liberty  ;  those  who  entered  were  at  liberty  to 
believe  almost  anything  they  liked,  not  even  the  atheist,  properly  so  called,  being 
excluded.  The  church  in  question  was  to  have  been  purely  symbolic  :  baptism  it 
was  to  recognize  as  the  symbol  of  initiation  into  Christian  civilization  ;  confirmation 
as  the  symbol  of  an  enrolment  among  the  soldiers  of  Liberty  ;  and  theeucharist,  that 
is  to  say  a  religious  love  feast,  as  the  symbol  of  the  brotherhood  of  man.     It  is  to 


lS4      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

spider-web,  who  has  freed   one    wing   and   one  leg,  and  only- 
one. 

Let  us  endeavour,  however,  to  enter  more  intimately  into  the 
thoughts  of  those  who  may  be  called  the  Neo-Christians,  and 

let  us  seek  for  the  element  of  truth,  if  such  there 
Neo-Christianity.     ,  ,  ,      .  ,         •,••,!,•  ,    ■ 

be,  that  their  much-criticised  doctrme  contains. 
If  Jesus  is  only  a  man,  they  say,  he  is  at  least  the  most 
extraordinary  of  men ;  at  one  bound,  by  an  intuition  at  once 
natural  and  divine,  he  discovered  the  supreme  truth  neces-  • 
sary  to  the  life  of  humanity  ;  he  is  in  advance  of  all  times^ 
he  spoke  not  only  for  his  own  people,  nor  for  his  own  century, 
nor  even  for  a  score  of  centuries  ;  his  voice  rolled  beyond  the 
restricted  circle  of  his  auditors,  and  the  twelve  apostles, 
beyond  the  people  of  Judea  prostrate  before  him,  to  us  in 
whose  ears  it  sounds  the  eternal  truth  ;  and  it  finds  us  even 
still  attentive,  listening,  trying  to  understand  it,  incapable  of 
finding  a  substitute  for  it.  "  In  Jesus,"  writes  Pastor  Bost  in 
his  work  on  "  Le  Protestantisme  liberal,"  "  the  mingling  of  the 
human  and  the  divine  was  accomplished  in  proportions  not 
seen  elsewhere.  His  relation  to  God  is  the  normal  and  typical 
relation  of  humanity  to  the  Creator.  .  .  Jesus  stands  forever 
as  the  model."  Professor  Herman  Schultz  in  a  conference  in 
Gottingen,  some  years  ago,  also  expressed  the  same  idea,  that 
Jesus  is  really  the  Messiah,  properly  so  called,  in  the  sense  that 
the  Jews  attached  to  that  word.  He  did  found  the  kingdom 
of  God,  not  it  is  true  by  marvellous  exploits  like  those  of 
Moses  or  of  Elias,  but  by  an  exploit  surpassing  theirs,  by  the 
sacrifice  of  love,  by  the  voluntary  gift  of  himself.  The  apos- 
tles and  Christians  in  general  did  not  believe  in  Jesus  because 
of  the  miracles  he  performed  :  they  accepted  his  miracles  owing 
to  their  previous  faith  in  him,  a  faith  the  true  foundation  of 
which  lay  in  Christ's  moral  superiority,  and  that   subsists   still 

be  added  that  these  sacraments  were  not  obligatory  and  that  the  members  might 
abstain  from  them  entirely  if  they  chose.  Still,  they  would  be  members  of  a  com- 
munion. Their  faith  would  be  designated  by  a  common  name,  they  would  be  in 
relations  with  a  priest  who  would  comment  in  their  presence  on  texts  of  the  New 
Testament,  and  would  talk  of  Christ  if  he  and  they  believed  in  Him.  The  church 
of  Dr.  Junqua  might  easily  have  succeeded  in  England  with  Mr.  Moncure  Conway 
and  the  secularists. 


SYMBOLIC  AND   MORAL   FAJTH.  1 85 

even  if  one  deny  the  miracles.  Professor  Schultz  concludes, 
against  Strauss  and  M.  Renan,  that  "a  belief  in  Christ  is 
wholly  independent  of  the  results  of  a  historical  criticism  of  his 
life."  Every  one  of  the  actions  attributed  to  Jesus  may  be 
mythical,  but  there  remain  to  us  his  words  and  his  thoughts, 
which  find  in  us  an  eternal  echo.  There  are  things  which  one 
discovers  once  for  all,  and  whosoever  has  found  love  has  made 
a  discovery  that  is  not  illusory  nor  of  brief  duration.  Is  it  not 
just  that  men  should  group  themselves  about  him,  range  them- 
selves under  his  name  ?  He  himself  loves  to  call  himself  the 
Son  of  Man  ;  it  is  under  this  title  that  humanity  should  revere 
him.  It  is  not  destruction  but  reconstruction  that  is  the  out-- 
come  of  contemporary  biblical  exegesis,  one  of  the  representa- 
tives of  English  Unitarianism,  the  Rev.  A.  Armstrong, 
said  in  1883.  It  adds  to  our  love  of  Jesus  to  recognize  in  him 
a  brother  and  to  see  in  the  marvellous  legends  associated  with 
him  no  more  than  the  symbol  of  a  love  more  naive  than  ours, 
that  namely  of  his  disciples.  Proof  by  miracle  is  but  the  ulti- 
mate form  of  a  temptation  from  which  humanity  should  escape. 
In  the  symbolic  story  of  the  temptation  in  the  desert,  Satan 
says :  "  Command  that  these  stones  be  made  bread  ;  "  he 
urged  Christ  to  be  guilty  of  a  miracle,  of  the  .prestidigitation 
which  the  ancient  prophets  had  employed  so  frequently  to 
strike  the  imagination  of  the  people.  But  Jesus  refused.  And 
on  another  occasion  he  said  to  the  people  indignantly:  If 
you  did  not  see  prodigies  and  miracles  you  do  not  believe, 
and  to  the  Pharisees  :  "  Ye  hypocrites,  ye  can  discern  the  face 
of  the  sky  and  of  the  earth,  .  .  .  and  why  even  of  your- 
selves judge  ye  not  what  is  right  ?  "  It  is  by  the  testimony  of 
our  own  souls,  say  the  Neo-Christians  ;  it  is  by  our  own  individ- 
ual conscience,  our  own  individual  reason,  that  we  shall  find 
justice  in  the  word  of  Christ,  and  that  we  shall  revere  it  ;  and 
this  word  is  not  true  because  it  is  divine,  it  is  divine  because  it 
is  true. 

Thus  understood,  liberal  Protestantism  is  a  doctrine  that 
merits  discussion;  only  it  is  sadly  in  lack  of  any  distinguishing 
characteristic  especially  to  mark  it  off  from  the  numerous 
philosophical  sects  which,  in  the  course  of  history,  have  gath- 


1 86      DISSOL  U TION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIE  TIES. 

ered  about  the  opinions  of  some  man  and  endeavoured  to  iden- 
tify his   teacliinj^s  with  the  truth  and  to  lend  to  them  an  au- 
thority more   than  human.     Pythagoras  was   for 
historic^  crhT-^   ^^'^  disciples  what  Jesus  is  to  the  hberal  Protestant. 

cism  and  liberal      The  traditional  respect  also  of  the  Epicureans  for 
Protestantism.         ,,      .  ,         .  ,,    ,  , 

their  master  is  well  known,  the  sort    of    worship 

they  rendered  him,  the  authority  that  they  lent  to  his  words.' 
Pythagoras  brought  to  light  a  great  idea,  that  of  the  harmony 
which  governs  the  physical  and  moral  universe  ;  Epicurus,  * 
another,  that  of  the  happiness  which  is  the  true  aim  of  rational 
conduct,  the  measure  of  goodness,  and  even  of  truth  ;  and  by 
their  disciples  these  two  great  ideas  came  to  be  looked  upon 
not  as  parts  of  the  truth  but  as  truth  itself  in  its  entirety  ;  they 
saw  no  ground  for  further  search.  In  the  same  way,  in  our 
own  times,  the  Positivists  see  in  Auguste  Comte  not  a  profound 
thinker  simply,  but  one  who  has  laid  his  finger,  so  to  speak,  on 
the  definitive  verity,  one  who  has  traversed  at  a  dash  the  whole 
domain  of  intelligence  and  traced  out  once  for  all  its  limits. 
It  is  rigorously  exact  to  say  that  Auguste  Comte  is  a  sort  of 
Christ  for  bigoted  Positivists — a  Christ  a  trifle  too  recent,  who 
did  not  have  the  happiness  of  dying  on  the  cross.  Each  of 
these  sects  reposes  on  the  following  belief :  Before  Pythagoras, 
Epicurus,  or  Comte,  nobody  had  seen  the  truth  ;  after  them 
nobody  will  ever  see  it  more  clearly.  Such  a  creed  implicitly 
denies:  i.  Historical  continuity,  the  inevitable  result  of  which 
is  that  the  man  of  genius  is  always  more  or  less  the  expression 
of  his  century  and  that  the  honour  of  his  discoveries  is  not  due 
wholly  to  himself;  2.  Human  evolution,  the  inevitable  result 
of  which  is  that  the  man  of  genius  cannot  be  the  expression  of 
all  the  centuries  to  come — that  his  point  of  view  must  neces- 
sarily be  some  day  passed  by — that  the  truth  discovered  by 
him  is  not  the  whole  truth  but  simply  a  stage  in  the  infinite 
progress  of  the  human  mind.  A  dens  dixit  is  comprehensible, 
or  if  not  comprehensible  at  least  conceivable;  but  to  resusci- 
tate in  favour  of  some  mere  human  being,  were  it  Jesus  himself, 
the  magister  dixit  of  the  Middle  Ages,  is  a  bit  of  an  anachron- 

'  See  the  author's  work  on  la  Morale  cT Epicure  et  ses  rapports  avec  les  doctrines 
contemporaines,  p.  i86. 


SYMBOLIC  AND  MORAL   FAITH.  187 

ism.  Geometers  have  always  held  Euclid  in  the  highest 
respect,  but  each  of  them  has  done  his  best  to  contribute  some 
new  theorem  to  the  body  of  doctrine  that  he  left  behind  ;  and 
is  the  rule  for  moral  truth  not  the  same  as  that  for  mathemati- 
cal truth  ?  Is  it  within  the  compass  of  one  man's  powers  to 
know  and  to  utter  all  that  there  is  to  be  known  ?  Is  an  autoc- 
racy the  only  form  of  government  in  the  sphere  of  mind  ?  Lib- 
eral Protestants  speak  to  us  of  the  "  secret  of  Jesus  ";  but  there 
are  many  secrets  in  this  world,  and  each  of  us  carries  his  own  ; 
and  who  shall  utter  the  secret  of  secrets,  the  last  word,  the 
supreme  verity  ?  Nobody  in  particular,  probably  ;  truth  is  the 
product  of  a  prodigious  co-operation,  at  which  all  peoples  and 
all  generations  must  work.  The  horizon  of  truth  can  neither 
be  taken  in  at  a  single  glance  nor  contracted  ;  to  perceive  the 
whole  of  it  one  must  move  forward  incessantly,  and  at  every 
step  a  new  perspective  is  laid  bare.  For  humanity,  to  live  is 
to  learn  ;  and  before  any  individual  human  being  can  tell  us 
the  great  secret,  he  must  have  lived  the  life  of  humanity,  the 
lives  of  all  existing  beings  and  even  of  all  existing  things, 
which  seem  scarcely  to  deserve  the  name  of  beings  ;  he  must 
have  concentrated  in  himself  the  universe.  There  can  there- 
fore properly  be  no  religion  centred  about  a  man.  A  man,  be 
he  Jesus  himself,  cannot  attach  the  human  spirit  to  himself  as 
to  a  fixed  point.  Liberal  Protestants  think  that  they  have  seen 
the  last  of  the  Strausses  and  Renans  and  their  destructive 
criticism,  because  they  have  admitted  once  for  all  that  Jesus 
was  not  a  god,  but  criticism  will  object  to  them  that  the  non- 
supernatural  Messiah  that  they  cherish  is  himself  a  pure  fig- 
ment of  the  imagination.  According  to  the  rationalistic 
exegesis,  the  doctrine  of  Christ,  like  his  life,  belongs  more  or 
less  to  the  domain  of  legend.  Jesus  never  so  much  as  con- 
<:eived  an  idea  of  the  redemption — the  very  conception  that  is 
which  lies  at  the  root  of  Christianity;  he  never  so  much  as 
conceived  an  idea  of  the  Trinity.  If  one  may  rely  upon  works 
which  stand  perhaps  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  that  of  Strauss — 
the  works  of  F.  A.  Mullcr,  of  Professor  Weiss,  of  M.  Havet— 
Jesus  was  a  Jew  with  the  spiritual  limitations  of  a  Jew.  His 
dominant  idea  was  that  the  end  of  the  world  was  at  hand  and 


I S  8      DISSOL  U  TION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EX  IS  TING  SO  CIE  TIES. 

that  on  a  new-created  earth  would  soon  be  realized  the  national 
kini^dom  looked  for  by  the  Jews  in  the  form  of  an  altogether 
terrestrial  theocracy.  The  end  of  the  world  being  near,  it  was 
naturally  not  worth  while  to  set  up  an  establishment  on  earth 
for  the  short  time  that  it  was  still  to  exist  ;  one's  entire  busi- 
ness was  properly  with  penitence  and  the  amendment  of  one's 
conduct,  in  order  not  to  be  devoured  by  fire  at  the  day  of 
judgment  and  excluded  from  the  kingdom  to  be  founded  on 
the  new-created  earth.  Moreover,  Jesus  preached  neglect  of- 
the  state,  of  the  administration  of  justice,  of  the  family,  of 
labour  and  of  property  ;  in  effect,  of  all  the  essential  elements 
of  social  life.  Evangelical  morality  itself  presents  to  the 
critics  of  this  school  little  more  than  a  disorderly  mixture  of 
the  precepts  of  Moses  on  disinterested  love  with  the  doctrine 
of  Hillel  more  or  less  well  founded  on  enlightened  self-interest. 
The  original  element  in  the  New  Testament  consisted  less  in 
the  logical  coherence  of  its  teachings  than  in  a  certain  unction 
in  the  language  employed,  in  a  persuasive  eloquence  which 
often  took  the  place  of  reasoning.  All  that  Christ  said  others 
had  said  before  him,  but  not  with  the  same  accent.  In  effect, 
German  historical  criticism  at  once  professes  the  greatest 
admiration  for  the  numerous  founders  of  Christianity  and 
leads  its  followers  a  long  way  from  the  ideal  man  conceived  by 
the  Neo-Christians  as  being  the  man-God  whom  primitive 
Christians  adored.  There  exists  accordingly  no  more  reason 
to  attribute  an  element  of  revelation  or  of  sacred  authority  to 
the  Mew  Testament  than  to  the  Vedas  or  to  any  other  reli- 
gious book.  If  Christianity  is  a  symbolic  faith,  the  myths  of 
India  may  quite  as  well  be  adopted  as  a  basis  of  symbolism 
as  the  myths  of  the  Bible.  And  contemporary  Brahmaists 
with  their  eclecticism,  confused  and  mystic  as  it  often  is,  must 
be  regarded  as  even  nearer  to  the  truth  than  the  liberal  Prot- 
estants who  still  look  for  shelter  and  salvation  nowhere  but 
under  the  diminishing  shadow  of  the  cross. 

Abandoning,  then,  all  effort  to  attribute  a  sacred  authority 
to  the  sacred  books  and  to  the  Christian  tradition,  may  one 
ascribe  to  them  at  least  a  superior  moral  authority?     Do  they 


SYMBOLIC  AXD   MORAL   FAITH.  189 

lend  themselves  in  any  especial  degree  to  such  a  purely- 
aesthetic  and  moral  symbolism  as  that  suggested  by  Mr. 
Arnold  ? 

A  purely  moral  symbolism  may  be  regarded  from  either  of 
two  points  of  view:  the  concrete,  which  is  that  of  history  ;  or 
Futility  of  Mr.     ^^^^  abstract,  which  is   that  of  philosophy.     Ilis- 
Arnold's method     torically  nothing  could  be  more  inexact  than  Mr. 
rt™nt7his-   Arnold's    method,   which    essentially   consists    in 
torical  criticism,     making  a  present  of  the  most  refined  conceptions 
of  our  epoch  to  primitive  peoples.     It  gives  us  to  understand, 
for  example,  that  the  Javeh  of  the  Hebrews  was  not  regarded 
as  a  perfectly  definite  person,  a  transcendent  power  altogether 
distinct  and  separate  from  the  world  and  manifesting  himself 
by  acts  of  capricious  volition,  a  king  of  the  skies,  a  lord   of 
battles,  bestowing  on  his  people  victory  or  defeat,  abundance 
or  famine,  sickness  or  health.     It  suffices  to  read  one  page  of 
the  Bible  or  the  New  Testament  to  convince  one's  self  that  a 
doubt  as  to  the    personal    existence    of  Javeh   never  for  an 
instant  crossed  the  Hebrew  mind.     So  be  it,  Mr.  Arnold  will 
say,  but  Javeh  was  in  their  eyes  no  more,  after  all,  than  the 
personification  of  justice,  because  they  believed  powerfully  in 
justice.      It  would  be   more  exact   to   say  that  the   Hebrews 
had  not  as  yet  a  very  philosophic  notion  of  justice  ;  that  they 
conceived  it  as  an  order  received  from  without,  a  command 
which  it  would  be  dangerous  to  disobey,  a  hostile  will  forcibly 
imposed  upon  one's  own.     Nothing  could  be  more  natural  in 
the  sequel  than  to  personify  such  a  will.     But  is  that  precisely 
what   we   understand   nowadays  by  justice;   and   does   it   not 
really   seem    to    Mr.  Arnold    himself    that    he    is    playing    on 
words,  when  he  endeavours  to  make  us  believe  all  that?     Fear 
of  the  Lord  is  not  justice.     There  are  matters  that  one  cannot 
express  in  the  form  of  legend  when  one  has  once  really  con- 
ceived  them— matters  the   true  poetry  of  which   consists   in 
their  very  purity,  in  their  simplicity.     To  personify  justice,  to 
represent    it   as   external    to   ourselves    under  the   form    of   a 
menacing  power,  is  not  to  possess  a  "  high  idea  "  of  it ;  is  not 
in  the  least,  as  Mr.  Arnold  phrases   it,  to   be   aglow   with    it, 
illuminated  by  it  ;  it  is,  on  the  contrary,  not  yet  really  to  have 


1 9  o      DISSOL  U I  'ION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EX  IS  TING  SO  CIE  TIES. 

formed  a  conception  of  justice.     What  Mr.  Arnold  regards  a5 
the  sublimcst  expression  of  an  altogether  modern  moral  senti- 
ment is,  on  the  ctjntrary,  a  partial  negation  of  it.     Mr.  Arnold's 
aim,   as   he   says,   is   a  "  literary  "  criticism  ;    but   the   literary 
method  consists  in  resetting  the  great  works  of  human  genius 
in  the  circumstances  among  which  they  were  conceived  ;  in  dis- 
covering  in   them   the  spirit  of   the  age   in  which  tliey  were 
written,  and  not  of  the  present  age.     If  we  endeavour  to  inter- 
pret  history   by   the    light   of    modern    ideas    we   shall   never, 
understand  a  jot  of  it.     Mr.  Arnold  is  pleasantly  satirical  at 
the  expense  of  those  who  find  in  the  Bible  allusions  to  con- 
temporary events,  to  such  and  such  a  modern  custom,  to  such 
and    such    a    dogma    unknown    to    primitive    times.     A    com- 
mentator, he  says,  finds  a  prediction  of  the  flight  to  Egypt  in 
the  prophecy  of  Isaiah  :  "  The  Lord  rideth  upon  a  swift  cloud 
and  shall  come  into  Egypt  ";  this  light  cloud  being  the  body 
of  Jesus  born  of  a  virgin.     Another,  more  fantastic,  perceives 
in  the  words:  "Woe  unto  them  that  draw  up  iniquity  with 
cords  of  vanity  " — a  malediction  of  God  against  church  bells. 
That  assuredly  is  a  singular  method  of  interpreting  the  sacred 
texts,   but   at   bottom   it   is  no   more   logical    to   look    in   the 
sacred  texts  for  modern  ideas,  good  or  evil,  than  to  search  them 
for  the  announcement  of  such  and  such  a  distant  event  or  for 
a  commentary  on  such  and  such  a  trait  of  contemporary  man- 
ners.     Really  to  practise  the  literary  method — and  the  scien- 
tific method  at  the  same  time — 'One  must  a  little  forget  one's  self, 
one's   nation,    one's  century ;    one   must  live  the   life  of  past 
times — must    become    a    Greek    when    one    reads     Homer,    a 
Hebrew  when  one  reads  the  Bible,  and  not  desire  that  Racine 
should    be     a    Shakespeare,    nor    Boccaccio    a  St.  Benedict, 
nor  Jesus  a  free-thinker,  nor  Isaiah  an   Epictetus  or  a  Kant. 
All  things  and  all   ideas   are  appropriate   in   their   own  times 
and     circumstances.       Gothic     cathedrals     are     magnificent, 
our    small    houses    to-day   are  very   comfortable;  there   is   no 
reason  why   we    should   not  admire  the  one  and  inhabit  the 
other ;  the    only    thing  that    is    really    inexcusable    is  to    be 
absolutely    unwilling   that    cathedrals   should   be  what  alone, 
they  are. 


SYMBOLIC  AND  MORAL   FAITH.  191 

Considered  not  from  the  point  of  view  of  history  but  purely 

from  that  of  philosophy,  Mr.  Arnold's  doctrine  is  much  more 

attractive,  for  its  aim  is  precisely  to  enable  us  to 

Philosophical  , .  ....  ... 

insufficiency  of       uiscover  our  owu   idcas  in  the  ancient  books  as 

Mr.  Arnold's  jj-j  ^  mirror.     Nothing  could  be  better,  but  are  we 

position.  .  ....  -1      T^  ,,  , 

really  in  want  01  this  mirror.''     Do  we  really  need 

to  rediscover  our  modern  conceptions  embodied  in  the  form 
of  myth  and  more  or  less  distorted  in  the  process?  Do  we 
really  need  voluntarily  to  go  back  to  the  state  of  mind  of 
primitive  peoples?  Do  we  really  need  to  dwell  upon  the 
somewhat  narrow  conception  that  they  possessed  of  justice 
and  of  morality  before  we  shall  be  capable  of  conceiving  a 
justice  more  generous  in  its  proportions  and  a  morality  more 
worthy  of  its  name?  Would  it  not  be  much  the  same  sort  of 
thing  as  for  one  who  was  teaching  children  physics  to  begin 
by  seriously  inculcating  the  classic  theory  of  nature's  abhor- 
ence  of  a  vacuum,  of  immobility  of  the  earth,  etc.?  The 
authors  of  the  Talmud  in  their  naive  faith  said  that  Javeh, 
filled  with  veneration  for  the  book  which  he  had  himself 
dictated,  would  devote  the  first  three  hours  of  every  day  to  a 
study  of  the  sacred  law.  The  most  orthodox  Jews  do  not 
to-day  oblige  their  God  to  this  recurrent  period  of  meditation  ; 
might  not  one  without  danger  permit  mankind  a  somewhat 
similar  economy  of  time?  Mr.  Arnold,  whose  mind  moves  so 
easily,  although  with  so  plentiful  a  lack  of  directness  and  of 
losfic,  criticises  somewhere  or  other  those  who  feel  a  need 
of  a  foundation  of  fable  for  their  faith,  a  foundation  of  super- 
natural intervention  and  marvellous  legend,  and  he  says  that 
many  religious  men  resemble  readers  of  romances  or  smokers 
of  opium  ;  the  reality  becomes  insipid  to  them,  although  it  is 
really  more  grand  than  the  fantastic  world  of  opium  and 
romance.  Mr.  Arnold  does  not  perceive  that,  if  the  reality 
is,  as  he  says,  the  greatest  and  most  beautiful  of  things,  we 
have  no  further  need  of  the  legend  of  Christianity,  not  even 
interpreted  as  he  interprets  it :  the  real  world,  and  by  the 
real  world  I  understand  the  moral  not  less  than  the  physical 
universe,  should  prove  abundantly  sufficient  for  us.  Ithuriel, 
Mr.  Arnold  says,  has  punctured  miracles  with  his  spear  ;  and 


19-      DISSOL  UTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIE  TIES. 

did  he  not  at  the  same  stroke  puncture  symbolism?  We  pre- 
fer to  see  truth  naked  rather  than  tricked  out  in  parti- 
coloured vestments;  to  clothe  truth  is  to  degrade  it.  Mr. 
Arnold  compares  a  too  absolute  faith  to  intoxication  ;  one 
might  willingly  compare  Mr.  Arnold  to  Socrates,  who  could 
drain  off  more  than  any  other  guest  at  the  table  without 
becoming  intoxicated.  Not  to  become  intoxicated  was,  for  the 
Greeks,  one  of  the  prerogatives  of  the  sage.  With  this  reser- 
vation they  permitted  him  to  drink,  but  in  our  days  the  sages- 
make  small  use  of  the  permission  ;  they  admire  Socrates  with- 
out imitating  him,  and  find  that  sobriety  is  still  the  best  means 
of  keeping  one's  head.  One  might  say  as  much  to  Matthew- 
Arnold.  The  Bible  with  its  scenes  of  massacre,  of  rape,  and 
of  divine  vengeance  is  in  his  judgment  bread  for  the  soul ;  the 
soul  can  no  more  do  without  it  than  we  can  ourselves  do  with- 
out eating.  The  reply  is  that  he  has  himself  proved  it  to  be  a 
dangerous  form  of  nourishment,  and  that  it  is  sometimes  better 
to  fast  than  to  eat  poison. 

For  the  rest,  if  one  persists  in  seeking  in  the  sacred  books 
of  by-gone  ages  for  the  expression  of  primitive  morality,  it  is 
Buddhism  more  "ot  in  the  Bible,  but  rather  in  the  Hindu  books 
deeply  symbolic  that  a  literary  or  philosophical  interpretation  will 
ris  lam  y,  ^^^j  ^|^g  most  extraordinary  example  of  moral 
symbolism.  The  entire  world  appears  to  the  Buddhist  as  the 
realization  of  the  moral  law,  since  in  his  opinion  beings  take 
rank  in  the  universe  according  to  their  virtues  or  vices,  mount 
or  descend  on  the  ladder  of  life  according  to  their  moral  eleva- 
tion or  abasement.  Buddhism  is  in  certain  respects  an  effort 
to  find  in  morals  a  theory  of  the  universe. 

In  spite  of  the  partial  lapses  from  logical  consistency  that 

have  been  here  pointed  out  in  the  theory  of  moral  symbolism, 

_,       ,        ,     there  is  one  conclusion  that  is  logically  insisted 
Dependence  of  ,  ,  i>  j 

religion  upon  on  in  the  books  just  examined,  and  in  especial 
morality.  jyj^.^  Arnold's  book,   namely:    that   the   solidest 

support  of  every  religion  is  a  more  or  less  imperfect  system  of 
morals  ;  that  the  power  of  Christianity,  as  of  Buddhism,  has  lain 
in  its  moral  injunctions,  and  that  if  one  suppressed  this  moral 


SYMBOLIC  AND   MORAL   FA /^'^S^^£ikli0g^^^a>^-^9.1 

injunction  there  would  nothing  remain  of  the  two  great  "  uni- 
versal "  religions  brought  forth  by  human  intelligence.  Reli- 
gion serves,  so  to  speak,  as  an  envelope  for  morality  ;  it  protects 
morality  against  the  period  of  its  ultimate  development  and 
efflorescence,  but  when  once  moral  beliefs  have  gained  strength 
enough  they  tend  to  protrude  from  this  envelope,  like  a  flower 

'bursting  out  of  the  bud.  Some  years  ago  what  was  at  that 
time  called   Independent  Morality  was  much  discussed  ;    the 

.defenders  of  religion  maintained  that  the  fate  of  morality  is 
intimately  bound  up  with  it — that  if  morality  were  separated 
from  religion  it  must  decline.  They  were  perhaps  right  in 
pointing  out  the  intimate  connection  between  morality  and 
religion,  but  they  were  mistaken  in  maintaining  that  it  is  the 
former  that  is  dependent ;  it  would  be  truer  to  say  the  precise 
opposite,  that  it  is  religion  that  depends  upon  morality,  that 
the  latter  is  the  principal  and  the  former  the  subordinate. 
The  Ecclesiast  says  somewhere,  "  He  hath  set  the  world  in 
their  heart."  It  is  for  that  reason  that  man  should  first  look 
into  his  own  heart,  and  should  first  of  all  believe  in  himself. 
Religious  faith  might  more  or  less  logically  issue  out  of  moral 
faith,  but  could  not  produce  the  moral  faith,  and  if  it  should 
go  counter  to  the  moral  faith  it  would  condemn  itself.  The 
religious  spirit  cannot  therefore  accommodate  itself  to  the 
new  order  of  things  except  by  abandoning,  in  the  first  place, 
all  the  dogmas  of  a  l.beral  faith,  and  then  all  the  symbols  of  a 
more  enlightened  faith  and  holding  fast  by  the  fundamental 
principle  which  constitutes  the  life  of  religion  and  dominates 
its  historical  evolution ;  that  is  to  say,  the  moral  sentiment  of 
Protestantism  in  spite  of  all  its  contradictions  has  really  intro- 
duced into  the  world  a  new  principle ;  it  is  this,  that  conscience 
is  its  own  judge,  that  individual  initiative  should  be  substi- 
tuted for  objective  authority.'     Such  a  principle  includes  as  a 

'  Toward  the  end  of  his  life  Luther  felt  an  increasing  discouragement  and  dis- 
quietude on  the  subject  of  the  reform  inaugurated  by  him:  "  It  is  by  severe  laws 
and  by  superstition,"  he  wrote  with  bitterness,  "that  the  world  desires  to  be 
guided.  If  I  could  reconcile  it  with  my  conscience  I  would  labour  that  the  Pope 
with  all  his  abominations  might  become  once  more  our  master."  Responsibility  to 
one's  own  conscience  was  indeed  Luther's  fundamental  idea — the  idea  which  justifies 
the  Reformation  in  the  eyes  of  history,  as  formerly  in  the  eyes  of  its  own  author. 


1 94      DISSOL  UTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIE  TIER. 

logical  consequence  not  only  the  suppression  of  real  dogmas 
and  of  mysteries,  but  also  that  of  precise  and  determinate 
symbols;  of  everything,  in  a  word,  which  proposes  to  impose 
itself  upon  the  conscience  as  a  ready-made  truth.  Protestant- 
ism unwittingly  contained  in  its  own  bosom  the  germ  of  the 
negation  of  every  positive  religion  that  does  not  address  itself 
exclusively  and  directly  to  private  judgment,  to  the  moral* 
sense  of  the  individual.  In  our  days  no  one  is  willing  to 
believe  simply  what  he  is  told  to  believe  ;  he  must  accept  it* 
independently  :  he  believes  that  the  danger  of  private  judg- 
ment is  only  apparent,  and  that  in  the  intellectual  world,  as  in 
the  world  of  civil  liberty,  it  is  out  of  liberty  that  all  authority 
worthy  of  respect  takes  its  rise.  The  revolution  which  tends 
thus  to  replace  a  religious  faith,  founded  on  the  authority  of 
texts  and  symbols,  by  a  moral  faith  founded  upon  the  right  of 
private  judgment  recalls  the  revolution  accomplished  three 
centuries  ago  by  Descartes,  who  substituted  evidence  and 
reasoning  for  authority.  Humanity  is  increasingly  anxious  to 
reason  out  its  own  beliefs,  to  see  with  its  own  eyes.  The  truth 
is  no  longer  exclusively  locked  up  in  temples ;  it  addresses  itself 
to  everybody,  communicates  with  everybody,  gives  everybody 
the  right  to  act.  In  the  cult  of  scientific  truth  everyone,  as 
in  the  early  days  of  Christianity,  is  capable  of  ofificiating  in  his 
turn  ;  there  are  no  seats  reserved  in  the  sanctuary,  there  is  no 
jealous  God,  or  rather  the  temples  of  truth  are  those  which 
each  of  us  rears  in  his  own  heart — temples  which  are  no  more 
truly  Christian  than  Hebrew  or  Buddhist.  The  absorption 
of  religion  into  morality  is  one  with  the  dissolution  of  all  posi- 
tive and  determinate  religion,  of  all  traditional  symbolism  and 
of  all  dogmatism.  Faith,  said  Heraclitus  profoundly,  is  a 
sacred  malady,  lepa  vo'o-os.  For  us  moderns  it  is  no  longer  a 
sacred  malady,  and  it  is  one  from  which  all  of  us  wish  to  be 
delivered  and  cured. 


CHAPTER   III. 

DISSOLUTION   OF    RELIGIOUS   MORALITY. 

I.  The  first  durable  element  of  religious  morality  :  Respect — Alter- 
ation of  respect  by  tlie  addition  of  the  notion  of  the  fear  of  God 
and  divine  vengeance. 

II.  Second  durable  element  of  religious  morality:  Love — Altera- 
tion of  this  element  by  the  addition  of  ideas  of  grace,  predestina- 
tion, damnation — Caducous  elements  of  religious  moralit^r — 
Mysticism— Antagonism  of  divine  love  and  human  love — Asceti- 
cism—Excesses of  asceticism— Especially  in  the  religions  of  the 
East — Conception  of  sin  in  the  modern  mind. 

in.  Subjective  worship  and  prayer— The  notion  of  prayer  from  the 
point  of  view  of  modern  science  and  philosophy— Ecstasy — The 
survival  of  prayer. 

Having  traced  the  dissolution  of  dogma  and  religious  syni- 
bolisin  it  is  appropriate  to  consider  the  fate  of  that  system  of 
religious  morality  which  rests  upon  dogma  and  upon  faith. 
There  are  in  religious  morality  some  durable  elements  and 
some  caducous  ones  which  stand  out  in  sharper  and  sharper 
opposition  in  the  course  of  the  progress  of  human  society. 
The  two  stable  elements  of  religious  morality  which  will 
occupy  us  first  are  respect  and  love ;  these  are  the  elements 
indeed  of  every  system  of  morality,  those  which  are  in  no- 
wise related  to  mysticism  or  symbolism,  and  which  tend  pro- 
gressively to  part  company  with  them. 

I.  Kant  regarded  respect  or  reverence  as  the  moral  senti- 
ment par  excellence  ;  the  moral  law,  in  his  opinion,  was  a  law 
of  reverence  and  not  of  love,  and  therein  lay  its 
elementTbve  pretensions  to  universality  :  for  if  it  had  been  a 
over  that  of  re-  j^w  of  love,  there  would  have  been  a  difficulty 
^^^°"  in  imposing  it  upon  all  reasonable  beings.     I  can 

insist  on  your  respecting  me  but  not  on  your  loving  me.     In 
the  sphere  of  society  Kant  is  right  :  the  law  cannot  provide 

195 


1 9 6      DISSOL  U T/O.V  OF  RELIGIOMS^IN  EXIS  TING  SOCIE  TIES. 

that  men  shall  love  each  other,  but  only  that  they  shall  re- 
spect each  other's  rights.  But  is  the  same  thing  true  in  the 
sphere  of  pure  morality — have  not  the  two  great  "  universal  " 
religions,  Buddhism  and  Christianity,  been  right  in  regarding 
love  as  the  controlling  principle  in  ethics?  Respect  is  no 
more  than  the  beginnings  of  ideal  morality  ;  in  the  atti- 
tude of  respect  the  soul  feels  itself  restricted,  held  in  check, 
embarrassed.  And  what  in  effect  essentially  is  respect,  but  the 
ability  to  violate  a  right  on  the  one  hand  and  on  the  other  a. 
right  to  go  inviolable  ?  Well,  there  is  another  sentiment  which 
does  away  with  the  very  possibility  of  violence  and  which 
therefore  is  even  purer  than  respect,  that  is  to  say  love,  and 
Christianity  has  so  understood  it.  Be  it  remarked  also  that 
respect  is  necessarily  implied  in  a  properly  understood  moral 
love  ;  love  is  superior  to  respect  not  because  it  suppresses  it 
but  because  it  completes  it.  Genuine  love  inevitably  presents 
itself  under  the  form  of  respect,  but  this  conception  of  respect, 
abstractly  taken,  is  an  empty  form  without  content ;  and  can 
be  filled  with  love  alone.  What  one  respects  in  the  dignity 
of  another  person  is — is  it  not  ? — a  personal  power  held  in  cheeky 
a  sort  of  moral  autonomy.  It  is  possible  to  conceive  a  cold 
hard  respect  that  is  not  absolutely  free  from  some  suggestion 
of  mechanical  necessity.  What  one  loves,  on  the  contrary,  in 
the  dignity  of  another  person  is  the  element  in  his  character 
which  beckons  and  welcomes  one.  Is  it  possible  to  con- 
ceive a  cold  love  ?  Respect  is  a  species  of  check,  love  is  an 
outleap  of  emotion  ;  respect  is  the  act  by  which  will  meets 
will  ;  in  love  there  is  no  sense  of  opposition,  of  calculation,  of 
hesitation ;  one  gives  one's  self  simply  and  entirely. 

Let  it  not  therefore  be  made  a  reproach  to  Christianity  that 
it    sees    in    love    the   very    principle  of   relationship    between 

reasonable  beings,  the  v^ery  principle  of  the  moral 
The  mistake  of     ,  ....  -n      i  •   i  11 

Christianity.  law  and  ot  justice.     raul  saj-swith  reason  that  he 

who  loves  others  fulfils  the  law.  In  effect,  the 
commandments:  thou  shalt  not  commit  adultery,  thou  shalt 
not  kill,  thou  shalt  not  covet,  and  the  rest,  were  summed  up  in  : 
thou  shalt  lov^e  thy  neighbor  as  thyself.  The  defect  of  Chris- 
tianity— a   defect  from  -.vhich   Buddhism  is   free — is  that  the 


DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIOUS  MORALITY  197 

love  of  men  is  there  conceived  as  disappearing,  in  the  last 
analysis,  in  the  love  of  God.  Man  is  not  beloved  except  in 
God  and  for  God,  and  human  society  as  a  whole  possesses  no 
foundation  nor  rule  of  life  except  in  the  relationship  of  men 
to  God.  Well,  if  the  love  of  man  for  man,  properly  under- 
stood, actually  implies  respect  for  rectitude,  the  same  thing 
cannot  be  said  with  the  same  degree  of  emphasis  for  the  love 
of  man  for  God,  and  in  God's  sight.  The  conception  of 
a  society  founded  on  the  love  of  God  contains  the  seeds  oi- 
theocratic  government  with  all  its  abuses. 

Moreover,  if  in  Christian  morality  love  of  man  resolves  itself, 
in  the  last  resort,  into  love  of  God,  love  of  God  is  always 
adulterated  with  fear;  the  Old  Testament  insists  upon  it  with 
positive  complacency.  The  fear  of  the  Lord  plays  an  impor- 
tant role  in  the  celestial  sanction,  and  justice  also,  which  is 
essential  to  Christianity,  and  which  more  or  less  definitely 
antagonizes  and  sometimes  even  paralyzes  it.  It  is  thus  that, 
after  having  traced  the  sentiment  of  respect  itself  and  of 
justice  to  a  foundation  in  love,  Christianity  suddenly  reinstates 
the  former,  re-endows  it  with  precedence  and  that  under  its 
most  primitive  and  savage  form — the  form  of  fear  in  man  and 
vengeance  in  God. 

This  sanction,  we  have  seen,  is  a  special  form  of  the  notion 
of  a  Providence.  Those  who  believe  in  a  special  Providence  dis- 
Respectforthe  tributing  good  and  evil  admit,  in  the  last  resort, 
■welfare  of  sentient  that  this  distribution  takes  place  in  conformity 
thrfssenc^^o'/'^^  with  the  conduct  of  the  receivers  and  the  senti- 
morality.  ments  of  approval  or  disapproval  that  that  con- 

duct  inspires  in  the  divinity.  The  idea  of  a  Providence,  in  the 
natural  course  of  its  development,  becomes  therefore  one  with 
the  notion  of  distributive  justice,  and  this  latter,  on  the  other 
hand,  becomes  one  with  the  idea  of  divine  sanction.  The  idea 
of  divine  sanction  has  been  conceived  up  to  this  point  as  one 
of  the  essential  elements  of  morality,  and  it  seems,  at  first  glance, 
that  religion  and  morality  here  coincide,  that  their  respective 
needs  here  unite,  or  rather  that  morality  reaches  completeness 
only  by  the  aid  of  religion.  The  notion  of  distributive  justice 
naturally  involves  the  notion  of  a  celestial  distributor,  but  we 


198      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

have  seen  in  a  preceding  work  that  the  notion  of  a  sanction 
properly  so  called,  and  the  notion  of  a  divine  penal  code,  have 
in  reality  no  essential  connection  with  morality ;  that  on  the 
contrary  they  possess  a  character  of  immorality  and  irrational- 
ity ;  and  that  thus  the  religion  of  the  vulgar  in  no  respect  coin- 
cides with  the  highest  morality,  but  that,  on  the  contrary,  the 
very  fundamental  idea  of  the  religion  of  the  vulgar  is  opposed 
to  morality.'  The  founders  of  religion  believe  that  the  most 
sacred  law  is  the  law  of  the  strongest ;  but  the  idea  of  force' 
logically  resolves  itself  into  the  relation  between  power  on  the 
one  hand  and  resistance  on  the  other,  and  physical  force  is 
always,  in  the  sphere  of  morals,  a  confession  of  weakness.  The 
sunnmim  bomim  therefore  can  contain  no  suggestion  of  force 
of  this  especial  kind.  If  human  law,  if  civil  law  be  condemned 
to  rely  upon  a  backing  of  physical  force,  it  is  therein  precisely 
that  it  lies  under  the  reproach  of  being  merely  civil  and  human. 
The  case  stands  otherwise  with  the  moral  law,  which  is  immu- 
table, eternal,  and  in  some  sort  inviolable  ;  and  in  the  presence 
of  an  inviolable  law  one  can  in  no  sense  assume  an  attitude 
even  of  suppressed  violence.  Force  is  powerless  against  the 
moral  law,  and  the  moral  law  has  therefore  no  need  on  its  own 
/  side  of  a  show  of  force.  The  sole  sanction  of  which  the  moral 
law  stands  in  need,  the  author  has  said  elsewhere,  as  against 
the  man  who  supposes  himself  to  have  abrogated  it,  is  and 
oug-ht  to  be  the  mere  fact  of  its  continued  existence  face  to 
face  with  him,  rising  up  before  him  ever  anew,  as  the  giant 
Hercules  believed  himself  to  have  vanquished  rose  ever 
stronger  to  his  embrace.  To  possess  the  attribute  of  eternity  in 
the  face  of  violence  is  the  only  revenge  that  goodness  personi- 
fied or  not,  under  the  figure  of  a  god,  can  permit  itself  as 
against  those  who  violate  it."     In  human  societies  one  of  the 

'  See  the  author's  Esqtdsse  d'jtne  morale  sans  obligation  ni  sanction,  p.  188,  etc. 

■^  "  If  God  had  consciously  created  the  human  will  of  such  essential  perversity  as 
to  find  its  natural  expression  in  thwarting  Him,  He  would  be  impotent  in  the  face 
of  it  ;  could  only  show  Himself  compassionate  ;  could  only  regret  His  own  act  in 
creating  it.  His  duty  would  not  be  to  punish  mankind  but  to  the  utmost  possible 
degree  to  lighten  their  sufferings,  to  show  Himself  gentle  and  good  directly  in  pro- 
portion to  this  evil  ;  and  the  damned,  if  they  were  truly  incurable,  would  be  in 
greater  need  of  the  joys  of  heaven  than  the  elect  themselves.     Either  the  sinner  can 


DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIOUS  MORALITY.  199 

distinguishing  traits  of  high  civiHzation  is  slowness  to  take 
offence  ;  with  the  progress  of  knowledge  one  finds  less  and  less 
ground  for  indignation  in  the  conduct  of  one's  fellow-men. 
When  the  being  involved  \:=  by  definition  the  very  personifica- 
tion  of  love  the  idea  of  offence  becomes  ridiculous  ;  it  is  impos- 
sible for  any  philosophic  mind  to  admit  the  bare  conception 
of  offending  God,  or  of  drawing  down  upon  one,  in  the  Biblical 
phrase,  his  anger  or  his  vengeance.  Fear  of  an  external  sanc- 
tion, or  of  any  sanction  other  than  that  of  conscience,  is  there- 
fore an  element  that  the  progress  of  the  modern  mind  tends 
to  exclude  from  morality.  It  is  in  vain  for  the  Bible  to  say 
that  fear  of  the  Lord  is  the  beginning  of  wisdom ;  morality 
does  not  truly  begin  until  fear  ceases  to  exist,  fear  being,  as 
Kant  said,  pathological,  not  moral.  Fear  of  hell  may  have 
possessed  in  former  times  a  certain  social  utility,  but  it  is 
essentially  a  stranger  in  modern  society,  and,  a  fortiori,  will  be 
in  the  society  of  the  future.  Moreover,  respect  for  the  happi- 
ness of  people  in  general  is  becoming  less  and  less  adulterated 
by  any  admixture  of  fear.  This  respect,  mingled  with  love  and 
even  engendered  by  love,  is  coming  to  be  an  altogether  moral, 

be  reclaimed  ;  and  in  that  event  hell  would  be  nothing  more  than  an  immense  school, 
an  immense  house  of  correction  for  preparing  the  culpable  with  the  utmost  possible 
rapidity  for  heaven  ;  or  the  sinner  is  incorrigible,  is  analogous  to  an  incurable 
maniac  (which  is  absurd),  and  then  he  is  eternally  to  be  pitied  and  a  supreme  Good- 
ness would  endeavour  to  compensate  him  for  his  misery  by  every  imaginable  means 
by  showering  upon  him  every  bliss  that  he  was  capable  of  enjoying.  Turn  it  as  one 
will,  the  dogma  of  hell  stands  thus  in  direct  opposition  to  the  truth. 

"  For  the  rest,  by  the  very  act  of  damning  a  soul,  that  is  to  say  shutting  it  out 
forever  from  His  presence,  or,  in  terms  less  mystical,  excluding  it  forever  from  a 
knowledge  of  the  truth,  would  not  God  in  turn  be  shutting  Himself  out  from  the 
soul,  limiting  His  own  power,  and  so  to  speak  in  some  measure  damning  Himself 
also  ?  The  penalty  of  the  damnation  would  fall  in  part  on  Him  who  inflicted  it.  As 
to  the  physical  torment  of  which  theologians  speak,  interpreted  metaphorically,  it 
becomes  even  more  inadmissible.  Instead  of  damning  mankind  God  ought  eternally 
to  gather  about  Him  those  who  have  strayed  from  Him  ;  it  is  for  the  culpable  above 
all  others  that,  as  Michel  Angelo  said,  God  opened  wide  his  arms  upon  the  cross. 
We  represent  Him  as  looking  down  upon  the  sinning  multitude  from  too  great  a 
height  for  them  ever  to  be  anything  to  Him  but  the  incarnation  of  misfortune. 
Well,  just  in  so  far  as  they  are  unfortunate  must  they  not  logically  be  the  especial 
favourites  of  divine  goodness?" — Esquisse  d'  une  morale  sans  obligation  ni  sanction, 
p.  189. 


200      DISSOLUTlOiX  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

and  an  altogether  philosophic  sentiment,  purified  of  anything 
in  the  nature  of  mysticism,  and  in  the  best  sense  religious. 

II.   Having  seen  how  readily  the  notion  of  respect  became 

corrupt  in  Christianity,  let  us  consider  the  fate  of  the  notion 

of  love.     If  the  importance  which  it  gave  to  this 

Unstable  eqni-  ...  ,-.     ^  ,i  i,  •    r  i  r  /^u    •    i.- 

librium  of  the        principle  Constitutes  the  chief  honour  of  Lhristi- 
Christian  notion     anitv  is  not  the  God  of  the  Christians,  neverthe- 

of  absolute  love.  •'  ..... 

less,  conceived  in  a  manner  mconsistent  with  the 
very  essence  of  His  being  ?  The  God  of  Christianity,  or  at  least  . 
of  orthodox  Christianity,  is  a  conception  of  absolute  love  which 
involves  a  contradiction  and  the  destruction  of  all  true  frater- 
nity. For  the  love  affirmed  to  be  absolute  is  in  fact  limited, 
since  it  has  to  do  with  a  world  that  is  marred  by  evil,  meta- 
physical, sensible,  moral.  The  love  is  not  even  universal,  since 
it  is  conceived  as  an  especial  grace  more  or  less  arbitrarily  be- 
stowed or  withheld,  according  to  the  dogma  of  predestination. 
The  doctrine  of  grace,  round  which  theology  has  played  with 
such  excess  of  subtlety,  completes  the  highest  principle  of 
morality,  the  principle  of  love  by  the  addition  of  the  grossest 
notion  of  anthropomorphism  :  that  of  favour.  God  is  always 
conceived  on  the  model  of  absolute  kings  who  accord  favour 
and  disfavour  capriciously  ;  one  of  the  most  vulgar  of  socio- 
morphic  relations  being  chosen,  as  one  perceives,  as  the  true 
analogue  of  God's  relation  to  His  creatures.  The  two  ele- 
ments of  the  notion  of  grace  are  antagonistic  to  each  other. 
Absolute  love  is  in  its  nature  universal,  favouritism  is  in  its 
nature  particular.  There  are,  according  to  theology,  a  cer- 
tain number  of  beings  who  are  excluded  from  universal  love; 
the  sentence  of  damnation  is  in  its  very  essence  such  an  exclu- 
sion. Thus  understood,  divine  charity  is  incompatible  with 
true  fraternity,  with  true  charity ;  for  true  charity  God  does 
not  possess — sets  us  no  example  of  it.  If  we  believe  that  God 
hates  and  damns,  it  will  be  in  vain  for  Him  to  forbid  personal 
vengeance.  We  shall  inevitably  espouse  His  hatreds,  and  the 
very  principle  of  vengeance  will  find  its  support  and  its  high- 
est realization  in  Him.  When  St.  Paul  said:  "Let  thyself 
not  conquer  by  the  instrumentality  of  evil,  but  overcome  evil 
by  goodness,"  the  precept  was  admirable.     Unhappily  God 


DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIOUS  MORALITY.  201 

was  the  first  to  violate  it,  to  decline  to  overcome  evil  by  good. 
Do  as  1  bid  thee  and  not  as  I  myself  do  is  the  very  spirit 
of  Christian  teachings.  Is  it  not  in  the  midst  of  a  sort  of 
hymn  to  charity  and  forgiveness  that  the  characteristic  phrase 
of  St.  Paul  occurs  :  "  If  thine  enemy  have  hunger  give  him 
to  eat  and  thou  shalt  heap  coals  of  fire  upon  his  head."  Thus 
the  apparent  forgiveness  becomes  transmuted  into  a  refined 
form  of  vengeance,  which  the  divine  sanction  serves  only  to 
make  more  terrible,  and  which,  under  the  cloak  of  benefits, 
nay  even  of  caresses,  pours  upon  the  head  of  one's  enemy  an 
avenging  flame;  one's  very  charity  sets  the  torch  to  the  fires  of 
hell.  This  indelible  stain  of  barbarism  on  the  page  of  love, 
this  atavistic  animal  instinct  of  vengeance  ascribed  to  God, 
shows  the  dangerous  side  of  the  theological  element  intro- 
duced into  the  morality  of  love. 

Another  danger  to  which    a  religion  founded  upon  a  divine 
love   is  subject   is  mysticism;  a  sentiment  destined  to  an  in- 
creasing antagonism  with  the  modern  mind  and 
Conflict  between  1,1  r  1   ■  1  1  • 

divine  and  human  condemned,  therefore,  ultimately  to  disappear. 
l°^«'  The  heart  of  man,  in  spite  of  its  fertility  in  giving 

birth  to  passions  of  all  sorts,  has  nevertheless  always  concen- 
trated itself  upon  a  small  number  of  objects  which  find  their  own 
level.  God  and  the  world  are  two  antagonists  between  which 
our  sensibility  is  portioned  out.  One  or  the  other  of  them  in- 
evitably receives  the  greater  share.  In  all  times  religious  sects 
have  felt  a  possible  opposition  between  absolute  love  of  God 
and  love  of  man.  In  a  number  of  religions  God  has  shown 
himself  jealous  of  the  affection  devoted  to  others,  and  thus  in 
a  sense  stolen  from  Him.  He  was  not  content  with  the  super- 
fluity of  the  human  heart.  He  was  bent  on  appropriating  the 
soul  in  its  entirety.  Among  the  Hindus,  as  we  know,  the 
very  essence  of  supreme  piety  lies  in  detachment  from 
the  world,  in  a  life  of  solitude  in  the  midst  of  great  forests,  in 
the  rejection  of  all  earthly  affection,  in  a  mystical  indifference 
in  regard  to  all  mortal  things.  In  the  western  world,  when 
Christianity  had  made  its  way,  this  thirst  of  solitude,  this 
home-sickness  for  the  desert  seized  once  more  upon  the  soul, 
and  thousands  of  men  fled  the  faces  of  their  fellows,  quitting 


202      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIOXS  AV  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

their  families  and  their  homes,  renouncing  all  other  love  but 
that  of  God,  feeling  themselves  more  intimately  in  His  pres- 
ence when  they  were  distant  from  all  beings  else  but  Him. 
The  whole  of  the  Middle  Ages  were  tormented  by  this  antag- 
onism between  divine  and  human  love.  In  the  end,  with  the 
immense  majority  of  men,  human  love  carried  the  day.  It 
could  not  be  otherwise  ;  the  very  Church  could  not  preach 
complete  detachment  for  everybody  under  pain  of  having  no- 
body to  preach  to.  But  among  scrupulous  and  strenuous  • 
souls  the  opposition  between  divine  and  human  love  mani- 
fested itself  in  all  the  circumstances  of  life.  One  remembers 
Mme.  Perier's  account  of  Pascal.  She  was  surprised  at  times 
that  her  brother  repulsed  her,  became  suddenly  cold  to  her, 
turned  away  from  her  when  she  approached  to  soothe  him 
in  his  pain  ;  she  began  to  think  he  did  not  love  her,  she 
complained  of  it  to  her  sister,  but  it  was  in  vain  to  try  to 
undeceive  her.  Finally  the  enigma  was  explained  on  the  very 
day  of  Pascal's  death  by  Domat,  one  of  his  friends.  Mme. 
Perier  learned  that  in  Pascal's  opinion  the  most  innocent  and 
fraternal  friendship  is  a  fault  for  which  one  habitually  fails  to 
take  one's  self  sufificiently  to  task,  because  one  underestimates 
its  magnitude.  "  By  fomenting  and  suffering  these  attach- 
ments to  grow  up,  one  is  giving  to  someone  else  some  por- 
tion of  what  belongs  to  God  alone;  one  is  in  a  manner  robbing 
Him  of  what  is  to  Him  the  most  precious  thing  in  all  the 
world."  It  would  be  impossible  better  to  express  the  mysti- 
cal antagonism  between  divine  and  human  love.  This  princi- 
ple occupied  so  prominent  a  place  in  the  foreground  of  Pascal's 
mind  that,  the  more  readily  to  keep  it  always  before  him,  he 
wrote  with  his  own  hand  upon  a  piece  of  paper  :  "  It  is  unjust 
in  me  to  permit  anyone  ,to  form  an  attachment  for  me,  how- 
ever voluntarily,  and  with  whatever  pleasure  they  may  do  it. 
In  the  long  run  I  should  deceive  them,  for  I  belong  to  nobody 
but  to  God,  and  have  not  the  wherewithal  to  satisfy  a  human 
affection.  .  .  I  should  therefore  be  culpable,  if  I  should 
allow  anyone  to  love  me,  if  I  should  attract  people  toward  me. 
.  .  .  They  should  pass  their  lives  and  employ  their  effort  in 
pleasing  and   searching  for  God."     The   instant  God  is  con- 


DissoLurioy  of  religious  morality.  203 

ceived  as  a  person  and  not  as  a  simple  ideal,  there  inevitably 
arises  in  souls  tinged  with  mysticism,  a  rivalry  between  His 
claims  and  those  of  other  persons.  How  can  the  Absolute 
admit  any  human  being  to  a  share  of  what  essentially  is  His? 
He  must  dwell  in  as  absolute  a  solitude  at  the  bottom  of 
man's  heart  as  on  the  height  of  heaven. 

The  rivalry  between  divine  and  human  love  perceived  by 
the  Jansenists,  as  by  many  of  the  early  Christians  and  by  mys- 
tics generally,  exists  even  to-day  for  a  large  num- 

Exists  at  the      j^^j.    q£    men.     In    certain    religious    houses    any 

present  day.  ^ 

excessively  affectionate  demonstration  toward 
their  parents  is  forbidden  to  children,  and  a  fraternal  or  filial 
kiss  is  made  the  basis  of  a  case  of  conscience.  If  Protestant 
education  and  custom  are  not  at  one  on  this  point  with  Cath- 
olic education  and  custom,  the  reason  is  that  Protestantism,  as 
has  already  been  observed,  has  no  talent  for  ultimate  logical 
consequences.  Catholicism,  on  the  contrary,  holds  logic  in 
scrupulous  respect.  To  cite  but  one  example:  is  not  the  inter- 
diction of  marriage  in  the  case  of  the  clergy  a  logical  deduc- 
tion from  the  conception  of  a  religion  which  is  founded  on  the 
theory  of  the  fall  of  man,  and  whose  purpose  in  the  w^orld  is 
essentially  anti-carnal  ?  Love  for  a  woman  is  too  absorbing, 
too  exclusive,  to  coexist  in  the  heart  of  a  priest,  side  by  side 
with  an  undiminished  love  for  God.  Of  all  the  sentiments  of 
the  soul,  love  is  the  one  which  fills  it  most  nearly  to  the  limit 
of  its  capacity.  It  is,  in  this  respect,  in  diametric  opposition  to 
the  theological  sentiment  which  consists  in  the  recognition  of 
a  sort  of  subjective  void  and  personal  insufficiency.  Two 
lovers  are  of  all  the  world  the  beings  who  are  most  sufficient 
unto  themselves,  they  are  of  all  the  world  those  who  experi- 
ence least  the  need  of  God.  Well,  for  mystics,  love  that  is  not 
given  to  God  is  love  wasted.  The  lightest  veil  is  enough  to 
screen  them  once  and  forever  from  the  "  intelligible  sun."  It 
is  of  the  very  essence  of  such  a  God  to  be  relegated  to  some 
region  above  the  world,  exiled  in  a  manner  from  the  soul 
of  man  ;  there  are  regions  of  love  in  which  He  does  not  exist 
ard  never  will  exist.  He  calls  me,  and  if  I  do  not  turn  my 
face  in  His  direction  precisely,  I  lose  Him. 


::o4      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

The  absolute  detachment   of  the    mystic    leads  to  another 

consequence  which  is  equally  in  opposition  to  modern  tenden- 

Conflict between   *^'^^  '  ^^  treats,  that  is  to  say,  as  an  absolute  zero 

mysticism  and        a  being  who  has  at   least  the  value  of   unit)',  to 

egoism.  ^^.-j.  .    j.j^^   ^^^^      j^   J    ^^^^   ^^   ^j^^   welfare   of  all 

sentient  beings  indiscriminatingly,  I  aim  also  in  some  measure 
at  my  own,  who  am  one  of  them  ;  and  moreover,  it  is  for  my 
own  that  I  can  labour  to  best  advantage.  This  ego  counts 
for  something  in  this  world,  it  is  a  unit  in  tlie  sum.  The  pure- 
love  inculcated  by  mysticism,  on  the  contrary,  lets  the  ego  go 
for  nothing,  after  the  manner  of  the  muleteer,  who,  in  reckon- 
ing his  mules,  always  forgot  to  count  the  one  he  was  sitting 
on  ;  the  missing  mule  never  turned  up  except  when  he  dis- 
mounted, so  that  he  ultimately  resolved  to  go  forward  on  foot. 
The  transcendent  and  chimerical  morality  of  mysticism  might 
be  compared  to  a  purely  humanitarian  theory  of  politics  ;  it  is 
indeed  even  more  abstract.  Patriotism,  no  doubt,  leans  upon 
a  delusion  wdien  it  regards  one's  native  country  as  the  centre 
of  the  world,  but  does  not  humanitarianism  lean  not  upon  one 
but  upon  a  whole  series  of  illusions?  In  the  item  of  illusions 
here  below  one  must  put  up  with  the  least  false  and  most  use- 
ful. Well,  it  is  probably  not  wholly  without  utility  that  each 
nation  in  the  universe  should  act  for  itself;  if  each  should 
attempt  to  act  exclusively  for  the  universe  as  a  whole  and  for 
the  love  of  the  whole,  either  it  would  not  act  at  all  or  it  would 
conceive  the  future  of  the  universe  practically  on  the  model  of 
its  own  future  and  would  commit  an  uninterrupted  succession 
of  mistakes.  Very  frequently  in  this  world  unconscious  and 
indirect  collaboration  is  more  efficacious  than  that  which  is 
conscious  and  direct.  Men  often  do  more  for  the  best  aims 
of  humanity  by  directing  their  attention  in  a  spirit  of  rivalry 
toward  needs  comparatively  immediate  but  which  for  that 
very  reason  stimulate  their  efforts  and  their  hopes,  than  by 
uniting  for  the  attainment  of  an  object  so  distant  that  it  dis- 
courages them.  In  morals  and  politics  one  has  not  only  to 
hit  upon  the  best  means  of  combining  the  forces  of  humanity, 
but  also  upon  what  is  the  best  means  of  exciting  human  effort ; 
and  on  that  score  there  is  something  to  be  said  even  for  the 


DISSOLUTION   OF  RELIGIOUS  MORALITY.  205 

love  of  the  parish  in  winch  one  is  born.  One's  parish  is  at  least 
a  definite  object:  one  knows  where  it  is,  one  cannot  lose  one's 
way,  one  may  entertain  a  hope,  nay  even  a  certitude,  of  reach- 
in"-  it,  and  hope  and  certitude  are  great  allies.  And  the  same 
is  true  of  self-love  and  love  for  those  with  whom  one  identifies 
one's  self.  It  is  precisely  this  that  mysticism  ignores  and  by 
that  means  puts  itself  in  opposition  to  the  scientific  spirit. 
For  mysticism  there  is  no  compromise  possible  between  the 
fact  and  its  ideal  which  denies  the  fact.  Logically  mysticism 
oueht  to  address  its  efforts  toward  total  annihilation,  much 
after  the  manner  of  the  followers  of  Schopenhauer  and  of  Hart- 
mann.  It  would  be  better  for  the  world  to  go  off  in  smoke, 
so  to  speak  ;  to  become  sublimated  like  the  corpses  which  the 
worshippers  of  the  sun  used  to  expose  to  its  rays,  to  be  con- 
verted, as  far  as  possible,  into  vapour. 

Excess  destroys  itself.       If  pleasure  ends  in  disgust,  mysti- 
cism possesses  also  its  seamy  side  in  a  certain  disenchantment 

with    God    himself,    in    a    certain    home-sickness 
h^7^1in^°*^  °^     for  unknown  joys,  in  that  sadness  peculiar  to  the 

cloister  for  which  Christians  were  obliged  to 
invent  a  new  name,  in  the  Latin  language,  to  designate — acedia. 
When  in  the  Middle  Ages  all  one's  preoccupations  and  affections 
were  turned  toward  heaven,  human  tenderness  was  impoverished 
to  precisely  that  extent.  The  intellectual  and  moral  evolution 
of  our  days  has  moved  in  a  contrary  direction ;  love  of  God  is 
on  the  decline.  Love  of  mankind,  on  the  contrary,  and  love  of 
living  beings  in  general,  is  on  the  increase.  A  sort  of  substitu- 
tion of  the  one  for  the  other  is  taking  place.  Does  it  not  seem 
as  if  earth's  turn  had  come,  and  that  much  of  the  force  previously 
spent  in  futile  adoration,  devoted  toward  the  clouds,  is  being 
more  and  more  practically  employed  in  the  service  of  humanity? 
Formerly,  ideas  of  human  fraternity  and  loving  equality 
were  promoted  in  especial  by  the  Christians.     The  explanation 

is  simple :    God  was    conceived   by  them    as    an 

Love  of  man  to     actual    father,    a  ^enitor ;    men    seemed    to    the 
take  its  place.  7,      ,  r        ■•,       ^        • 

early  Christians  all  of  one  family,  having  a  com- 

mon   ancestor.      So   that   divine    love    and   human   love  were 

regarded  by  them  as  inseparably  bound  up  with  each  other.     It 


2o6      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

is  to  be  added  that  Christianity,  which  made  its  way  into  the 
world  through  the  lower  classes  of  society,  had  everything  to 
gain  by  giving  prominence  to  notions  of  fraternity  and  equality  ; 
it  was  by  this  means  among  others  that  it  conciliated  the 
masses,  who  were  for  a  long  time  its  main  support.  But  from 
the  moment  it  found  itself  able  to  rely  upon  the  higher  classes 
of  society,  how  quickly  it  changed  its  language  is  well  known, 
and  at  the  present  moment  the  position  of  Christianity  is 
precisely  opposite  to  that  which  it  occupied  in  the  ancieirt 
world.  Ardent  advocates  of  the  ideas  of  fraternity  are  often  ad- 
versaries of  religion,  are  often  free-thinkers,  sometimes  decided 
atheists.  The  system  of  thought  which  founded  the  love  of 
men  for  each  other'  upon  a  community  of  origin  is  almost 
universally  rejected.  Social  doctrines,  which  in  former  times 
were  so  often  based  upon  the  element  of  socialism  in  the  New 
Testament,  are  nowadays  being  formed  and  inculcated  in 
complete  independence  of  religious  faith  and 'often  in  positive 
antagonism  to  any  religious  faith  whatever.  Religion  some- 
times presents  itself  as  an  additional  obstacle,  simply,  to  the 
brotherhood  of  man,  in  that  it  creates  more  stubborn  divisions 
among  them  than  differences  of  class  or  even  of  language. 
By  an  inevitable  evolution  religion  has  to-day  come  to  repre- 
sent among  certain  nations  the  spirit  of  caste  and  intolerance, 
and  consequently  of  jealousy  and  enmity,  whereas  non-religion 
has  come  to  be  the  recognized  champion  of  social  equality,  of 
tolerance,  and  of  fraternity.  Behind  God,  rightly  or  wrongly, 
as  behind  their  natural  defender,  the  partisans  of  the  old  order 
of  things,  of  privilege  and  hereditary  enmities,  have  ranged 
themselves;  in  the  breast  of  the  faithful  a  mystical  love  for 
God  corresponds  to-day  as  in  other  days  to  an  anathema  and 
malediction  on  mankind.  It  was  long  ago  remarked  that  those 
whose  blessing  is  most  fluent  can  also  show  themselves  at 
need  the  most  fluent  to  curse  ;  the  most  mystical  are  the  most 
violent.  Nothing  can  equal  the  violence  of  the  gentle  Jesus 
himself  when  he  is  speaking  of  the  Pharisees,  whose  doctrines 
possessed  so  close  an  analogy  to  his  own.  Whoever  believes 
himself  to  have  felt  the  breath  of  God  upon  his  forehead 
becomes  bitter  and  obstinate  in  his  relations  with  mere  men  ; 


DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIOUS  MORALITY.  207    . 

he  is  no  longer  one  of  them.  So  that  the  notion  of  the  divine, 
of  the  superhuman  tends  toward  that  of  the  antinatural  and 
•antihuman. 

The  aim  of  progress  in  modern  societies  is  to  domesticate 
peace  within  their  limits  as  well  as  without,  to  suppress  mysti-    / 

cism,  and  to  concentrate  upon  the  real  universe,    1 
f  ^^^^°^°^*°^  present  or  to  come,  the  whole  body  of  our  affec-    ' 

tions ;  to  bind  our  hearts  together  in  so  intimate 
a  union  that  they  shall  be  sufficient  untO  themselves  and  unto 
each  other,  and  that  the  human  world,  magnified  by  the  eyes  I 
of  love,  may  gather  to  itself  the  totality  of  things.  In  the  first 
place  the  love  of  family,  which  scarcely  existed  at  all  in  ancient 
times,  and  which  in  the  Middle  Ages  was  almost  entirely  ab- 
sorbed by  the  conception  of  authority  and  of  subordination,  can 
scarcely  be  said  to  have  acquired  before  our  days  a  consider- 
ble  hold  on  human  life.  .  It  is  only  since  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury and  the  spread  of  the  theory  of  equality  that  the  father 
of  a  family,  in  especial  in  France,  has  ceased  to  consider  him- 
self as  a  sort  of  irresponsible  sovereign,  and  begun  to  treat  his  * 
wife  in  some  sort  as  his  equal  and  to  exercise  over  his  children 
no  more  than  the  minimum  of  possible  authority.  Whenever 
women  shall  receive  an  education  almost  equivalent  to  that 
given  to  men,  the  moral  equality  between  them  and  men  will 
have  been  consecrated,  and  as  love  is  always  more  complete 
and  more  durable  between  beings  who  consider  each  other  as 
morally  equal,  it  follows  that  the  love  of  family  will  increase, 
will  draw  to  itself  a  greater  proportion  of  the  desires  and 
aspirations  of  the  individual.  In  positive  opposition  to 
relig-ion,  which  has  undertaken  to  combat  the  love  of  woman 
by  restraining  it  within  narrow  limits,  the  love  of  woman  has 
attained  little  by  little  an  intensity  that  it  never  possessed  in 
ancient  times:  it  suffices  to  read  our  poets  to  become  con- 
vinced of  it,  and  it  will  continue  to  increase  with  the  intel- 
lectual development  of  women,  which  will  make  a  closer 
and  more  complete  union  between  men  and  women  possible 
than  exists  at  present.  The  association  of  man  and  woman 
being  capable  thus  of  becoming  in  a  manner  a  sort  of  intel- 
lectual association  and  fellowship,  it  will  result  in  a  fertility  of 


208      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

a  new  species  :  love  will  no  longer  act  upon  the  intelligence 
solely  as  the  most  powerful  of  stimulants,  it  will  contribute 
positive  elements  hitherto  unknown.  It  is  impossible  to 
predict  the  sort  of  work  that  the  combined  labour  of  man  and 
woman  will  produce  when  they  possess  a  preparation  for  it 
that  will  be  practically  upon  both  sides  equal.  Some  hint  of 
what  one  means  may  be  gathered  from  examples  actually 
under  one's  eyes.  In  the  present  century  men  and  women  of 
talent  are  tending  to  come  into  closer  relations  with  each' 
other;  and  I  might  cite  the  names  of  Michelet  and  Mme. 
Michelet,  of  John  Stuart  Mill  and  his  wife,  of  Lewes  and 
George  Eliot,  and  other  names  besides.  But  not  to  give  an 
undue  prominence  to  great  names  like  these,  which  are  after 
all  exceptions  in  the  human  race,  it  is  not  too  much  to  assert 
that  from  the  very  top  of  the  social  ladder  to  the  bottom  the 
family  tends  increasingly  to  become  a  unity,  a  more  and  more 
perfect  organism  in  which  man  will  one  day  find  scope  for  all 
of  his  powers  and  capabilities.  The  importance  of  the  family 
increases,  as  that  of  the  city  and  of  the  despotic  tutelage  of 
the  state  decreases.  This  importance,  which  is  almost  non- 
existent in  purely  military  societies  (of  which  Lacedaemon 
may  serve  as  the  accomplished  exemplar),  becomes  greater  and 
greater  in  free  and  industrial  societies  such  as  those  of  the 
future,  and  thus  there  opens  a  new  field  for  human  activity 
and  sensibility.  The  love  of  men  and  women  for  each  other 
and  of  both  for  their  children,  heightened  by  the  growing 
sentiment  of  equality,  is  destined  in  the  author's  judgment  to 
create  a  new  and  non-mystical  sort  of  religion,  the  worship  of 
the  family.  If  a  cult  for  the  gods  of  the  hearth  was  one  of 
the  earliest  religions,  perhaps  it  will  also  be  actually  the  last  : 
the  family  hearth  possesses  in  and  of  itself  an  element  of 
sacredness,  of  religion,  since  it  binds  together  as  about  a 
common  centre  beings  so  diverse  in  origin  and  sex.  And 
thus  the  modern  family,  founded  on  the  law  of  equality,  seems 
by  its  very  spirit,  and  by  the  sentiments  which  it  excites,  to  be 
in  growing  opposition  to  religious  mysticism.  The  true  type 
of  the  priest,  whatever  Protestantism  may  say,  is  the  solitary 
man,   the   missionary   here   below,  devoted   body  and   soul  to 


DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIOUS  MORALITY.  209 

God  ;  whereas  the  type  of  the  practical  philosopher  and  the 
modern  sage  is  a  loving,  thinking,  labouring  man,  devoted  to 
those  who  are  dear  to  him. 

A  similar  antagonism  may  be  seen  between  the  sentiment  of 
mysticism  and   of  allegriance   to   the  state.     The  citizen  who 


-t> 


And  love  of 


knows  that  the  fate  of  his  country  lies  in  his 
arms,  who  loves  his  country  with  an  active  and 
sincere  love,  is  a  worshipper  in  a  social  religion. 
Great  politicians  have  almost  always  been  large  and  liberal 
minds.  The  ancient  republics  were  comparatively  non-religious 
for  their  time  ;  the  disappearance  of  monarchy  coincides  in 
general,  in  the  history  of  mankind,  with  enfeeblement  of 
faith.  When  everybody  shall  feel  himself  as  equally  and 
truly  a  citizen  as  anybody  else,  and  shall  be  able  to  devote 
himself  with  an  equal  love  to  the  good  of  the  state,  there  will 
no  longer  be  so  great  a  store  of  unemployed  activity,  of  sur- 
plus sensibility  lying  ready  to  the  hand  of  mysticism.  For 
the  rest,  let  us  magnify  a  little  the  sphere  of  human  activity  ; 
not  only  the  family  and  the  state  are  nowadays  demanding  an 
increasingly  large  share  of  one's  attention  and  affection,  but 
the  human  race  itself  is  coming  to  be  each  day  more  and 
more  intimately  present  to  the  mind  of  each  of  us.  We  find 
it  more  and  more  difificult  even  in  thought  to  isolate  ourselves, 
to  become  absorbed  either  in  ourselves,  or  in  God.  The 
human  world  has  become  infinitely  more  human  than  for- 
merly ;  all  the  bounds  which  separated  men  from  each  other 
(religion,  language,  nationality,  race)  are  regarded  already  by 
superior  men  as  artificial.  The  human  race  itself  is  coming  to 
be  recognized  as  a  part  only  of  the  animal  kingdom,  the  entire 
world  claims  the  attention  of  science,  offers  itself  to  our  love 
and  opens  for  the  devotees  of  mysticism  the  perspective  of  a 
species  of  universal  fraternity.  Just  in  so  far  as  the  universe 
thus  grows  larger,  it  becomes  less  and  less  insufificient  in  our  eyes ; 
and  this  surplus  of  love,  which  formerly  mounted  toward  heaven 
in  search  of  some  transcendent  resting  place,  finds  ample  room 
upon  the  surface  of  the  earth  and  of  heavenly  bodies  not 
unknown  to  astronomy.  If  the  mystical  tendency  of  the 
human  mind   be   not   destined  completely   to  disappear,  if   it 


2IO      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

possesses  any  element  of  permanency,  it  will  at  least  change  its 
direction,  and  indeed,  little  by  little  is  changing  it.  Christians 
were  in  no  sense  wrong  in  finding  society  in  ancient  times  too 
narrow  and  the  ancient  world  too  cabined  and  confined  under 
its  dome  of  crystal  ;  the  very  reason  for  the  existence  of 
Christianity  lay  in  tiiis  vicious  conception  of  society  and  of 
nature.  To-day  the  one  thing  needful  is  to  magnify  the 
world  till  it  shall  satisfy  the  needs  of  man  ;  until  an  equilibrium 
be  established  between  the  universe  and  the  human  heart. 
The  aim  of  science  is  not  to  extinguish  the  need  to  love 
which  constitutes  so  considerable  an  element  of  the  religious 
sentiment,  but  to  supply  that  need  with  an  actually  existing 
object  ;  its  function  is  not  to  put  a  check  upon  the  outleap  of 
human  affection  but  to  justify  it. 

And  remark,  also,  that  if  the  love  of  a  personal  God  mystic- 
ally conceived  tends  to  become  dim  in  modern  societies,  the 
^    ^,    ,        .    same  is  not  true  of  the  love  of  an  ideal  God  con- 

Bnt  the  love  of  _ 

a  personal  God        ceived   as  the   practical  type    o^   conduct.      The 

guTshedfn'aUtliis  '^^^^  ^od,  in  effect,  in  no  sense  exists  in  opposi-  j 
fromlove ofthe  tion  to  the  world,  He  surpasses  it  simply;  He  is 
at  bottom  identical  with  the  progress  of  human 
thought  which,  with  its  point  of  departure  in.  brute  fact,  out- 
strips the  actual  and  foresees  and  prepares  the  way  for  per- 
petual progress.  In  human  life  the  real  and  the  ideal  are 
harmonized,  for  life  as  a  whole  both  is  and  becomes.  Who- 
ever says  life,  says  evolution  ;  and  evolution  is  the  Jacob's 
ladder  resting  both  on  heaven  and  on  earth  ;  at  the  base  of  it 
we  are  brutes,  at  the  summit  of  it  we  are  gods,  so  that 
religious  sentiment  cannot  be  said  so  much  to  be  in  opposition 
to  science  and  philosophy  as  to  complete  them  ;  or  rather,  it  is 
at  bottom  identical  with  the  spirit  that  animates  them.  We 
have  spoken  of  religion  as  science, — in  its  beginnings  as  uncon- 
scious science  ;  in  the  same  way  science  may  be  called  religion 
headed  back  toward  reality;  headed,  that  is  to  say  in  the  nor- 
mal direction.  Religion  says  to  the  human  race  :  Bind  your- 
selves together  into  a  single  whole  ;  science  shows  the  human 
race  that  all  mankind  are  inevitably  parts  of  a  single  whole  al- 
ready, and  the  teaching  of  the  two  is  practically  one. 


DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIOUS  MORALITY.  211 

In  effect  there  is  taking  place  a  certain  substitution  in  our 

affections  ;  we  are   coming  to  love  God    in   man,  the  future  in 

the  present,  the  ideal  in  the  real.     The  man  of 

Summary.  ...  .      ,        ,  /^      .      r  ^1 

evolution  is  precisely  the  man-God  of  Christianity. 
And  this  love  of  the  ideal  harmonized  with  the  love  of  hu- 
manity, instead  of  finding  its  vent  in  vain  contemplation  and 
ecstasy,  will  fill  the  limbs  with  energy.  We  shall  love  God  all 
the  more  that  He  will  be,  so  to  speak,  the  work  of  our  own 
hands.  And  if  there  be  really  at  the  bottom  of  the  human 
heart  some  indestructible  element  of  mystic^m,  it  will  be  em- 
ployed as  an  important  factor  in  the  service  of  evolution  ;  our 
heart  will  go  out  to  our  ideas,  and  we  shall  adore  them  in  pro- 
portion as  we  shall  realize  them.  Religion  having  become  the 
purest  of  all  things — pure  love  of  the  ideal — will  at  the  same 
time  have  become  the  realest  and  in  appearance  the  humblest 
of  all  things — labour. 

The    natural      and     practical    complement    of     mysticism 
is    asceticism  ;    and    asceticism    is   another    of  the    elements 
of    religious  morality    that    are    becoming    daily 
ascetidsm.™  ^^      feebler    in    the    presence    of    the    modern    spirit. 
Austerity  is  of  two  kinds,  the  one  quite   mysti- 
cal in  origin,  despising  art,  beauty,  science  ;  the  other  founded 
on  a  certain  moral  stoicism,  a  certain  respect  for   one's  self. 
,     ^.  .     .        The  latter  is  in  no  sense  ascetic,  it  is  composed 

Asceticism  in  '  ^ 

the  good  and  the  for  the  most  part  of  the  very  love  for  science  and 
art,  but  it  is  the  highest  art  only  that  it  loves,  and 
science  for  science's  sake  that  it  pursues.  The  excess  of  auster- 
ity, to  whi(?li  religions  have  so  often  led,  bears  the  same  relation 
to  virtue  that  avarice  does  to  economy.  Austerity  alone  does 
not  constitute  a  merit  or  an  element  of  superiority.  Life  may 
be  much  more  gentle,  more  social,  better  on  many  accounts 
among  a  people  of  loose  manners  like  the  ancient  Greeks, 
than  among  a  people  who  regard  existence  as  hard  and  dry, 
and  who  make  it  so  by  the  brutality  of  their  faith  and  ignore 
the  lightening  of  the  burden  of  life  that  lies  in  smiles  and  tears. 
One  would  rather  live  with  prodigals  than  with  misers.  Ava- 
rice, however,  which  may  be  regarded  in  the  life  of  a  people  or 


212      DISSOLUTIOX  OF  RELIGIOXS  IX  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

of  a  family  as  a  state  of  transition,  is  economically  and  morally 
superior  to  prodigality.  The  same  may  be  said  of  excessive 
rigour.  E.xcessive  rigour  and  avarice  are  defects  which  are 
rendered  tolerable  by  their  consequences,  which  impoverish 
life  in  order  subsequently,  with  a  freer  hand,  to  enrich  it.  It 
is  better  for  the  race  if  not  always  so  for  the  individual  to  be 
economical  to  excess  than  to  dissipate  its  resources  intemper- 
ately.  An  impulse  held  in  check  gathers  force.  Austerity, 
like  avarice,  is  a  means  of  defence  and  of  protection,  a  weapon.- 
Conquerors  have  often  in  the  course  of  history  been  the  sons 
of  misers  who  have  amassed  treasure  and  blood  for  their  bene- 
fit. From  time  to  time  it  is  good  to  regard  one's  self  as  an 
enemy,  and  to  live  and  sleep  in  a  coat  of  mail.  For  the  rest, 
there  are  temperaments  that  can  be  held  in  check  by  nothing 
lighter  than  bars  of  iron,  that  find  no  mean  between  pure  water 
and  pure  alcohol ;  between  a  bed  of  roses  and  a  crown  of 
thorns  ;  between  moral  law  and  military  discipline  ;  between 
a  moralist  and  a  corporal.  Still,  one  must  not  represent  such 
a  state  of  mind  at  least  as  ideal.  The  ascetic  hates  himself ; 
but  one  must  hate  nobody,  not  even  one's  self;  one  must  un- 
derstand all  things  and  regulate  them.  Hatred  of  self  springs 
from  feebleness  of  will  ;  w^hoever  is  gifted  with  self-control 
need  not  hate  himself.  Instead  of  giving  one's  self  a  bad  name 
one's  duty  is  to  make  one's  self  worthy  of  a  better.  There 
may  well  be  a  certain  legitimate  element  of  rigour,  of  inner 
discipline,  in  every  system  of  morality  ;  but  this  discipline 
should  be  reasonable,  rationally  directed  toward  an  end  which 
explains  and  justifies  it:  one's  business  is  not  to  break  the 
body  but  to  fashion  it,  to  bend  it.  The  savant,  for  example, 
should  aim  to  develop  his  brain,  to  refine  his  nervous  system, 
to  reduce  his  circulatory  and  nutritive  system  to  their  lowest 
terms.  You  may  call  that  asceticism  if  you  like,  but  it  is  a 
fertile,  a  useful  asceticism  ;  it  is  at  bottom  a  moral  hygiene 
simply — which  ought  to  be  made  a  part  of  physical  hygiene. 
A  surgeon  knows  that  he  must  lead  a  severe  and  continent 
life,  or  his  hand  will  lose  its  cunning.  The  very  condition  of 
his  being  able  to  aid  other  people  is  that  he  in  a  measure 
suffer  privation  himself ;  he  must  choose.     And  to  make  this 


DISSOLUTION'  OF  RELIGIOUS  MORALITY.  213 

choice  he  experiences  no  need  of  a  religious  injunction,  he  re- 
quires only  the  voice  of  conscience.  It  suffices  for  him  to 
know  enough  of  moral  hygiene  to  foresee  the  distant  results 
of  his  conduct  and  to  possess  a  sufficient  measure  of  firmness 
to  be  self-consistent.  It  is  after  this  fashion  that,  in  plotting 
out  one's  life  according  to  scientific  laws,  one  may  regulate  it, 
may  render  it  almost  as  hard  as  that  of  the  most  self-denying 
monk.  Every  profession  that  is  freely  chosen  is  in  the  nature 
of  a  self-imposed  discipline.  As  to  the  choice  of  no  profes- 
sion, as  to  voluntary  idleness — that  is  in  and  of  itself  immoral 
and  necessarily  leads  to  immorality,  whatever  may  be  the  reli- 
gion that  one  holds. 

The  ultimate  consequence  of  excessive  rigourism  is  morbid 

preoccupation  with   sin :    an    obsession    which,  with  the  fear    i 

.     ^.  ,  of  the  millennium,  is  one  of  the  greatest  of  the 

Asceticism  re-  °  j 

suits  in  a  preoccu-  futile  tortures  that  have  afflicted  humanity.  It  I 
pationwit  sin.  j^  ^^  dangerous  for  man  to  magnify  his  vices  as 
his  virtues ;  to  believe  one's  self  a  monster  possesses  no 
greater  exemption  from  evil  consequences  than  to  believe  one's 
self  perfect.  Sin  in  itself,  and  philosophically  considered, 
is  a  conception  difficult  to  reconcile  with  the  modern  idea  of 
scientific  determinism,  which,  when  it  has  explained  everything, 
goes  far,  if  not  toward  justifying  everything,  at  least  toward 
pardoning  everything.  Neither  the  pangs  nor  the  vanity  of 
sin  are  permissible  to  us  nowadays  when  we  are  hardly  cer- 
tain really  that  our  own  sins  belong  to  us.  Temptation  comes 
to  us  in  the  guise  of  the  reawaking  of  an  hereditary  appetite,  \ 
handed  down  to  us  not  only  from  the  first  man,  but  from  the  ' 
ancestors  of  the  first  man,  or  more  accurately  from  life  itself, 
from  the  universe,  from  the  God  who  is  immanent  in  the 
world  or  who  transcends  it,  and  has  created  it ;  it  is  not  the 
devil  that  tempts  us,  it  is  God.  Like  Jacob,  of  whom  we 
were  speaking  a  moment  ago,  we  must  vanquish  God,  must 
subject  life  to  thought,  must  give  the  victory  to  the  higher 
forms  of  life,  as  against  the  lower.  If  we  are  wounded  in  this 
struggle,  if  we  are  branded  with  the  mark  of  sin,  if  we  mount 
haltingly  up  the  steps  of  goodness,  we  ought  not  to  be  immeas- 
urably terrified  :  the  essential  thing  is  to  go  upward.     Temp- 


2  14     DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

tation  is  not  in  and  of  itself  a  blot,  it  may  be  even  an  emblem 
of  nobility  so  long  as  one  does  not  yield  to  it.  Our  first 
fathers  were  not  subject  to  temptation,  properly  so  called, 
because  they  yielded  to  all  their  desires,  because  they  made 
no  struggle  against  them.  Sin  or  moral  evil  is  explicable  : 
first  by  the  antagonism  between  instinct  and  reflection ; 
second,  by  the  antagonism  between  egoistic  instincts  and 
altruistic  instincts.  This  double  antagonism  between  instinct 
and  conscious  purpose,  between  egoism  and  altruism,  is  a* 
necessary  incident  of  self-knowledge  and  a  condition  of 
progress  :  to  know  one's  self  is  to  be  aware  more  or  less 
uneasily  of  a  manifold,  and  succession  of  inconsistent  desires 
of  which  the  moving  equilibrium  constitutes  life  itself ;  self- 
knowledge,  and  knowledge  in  general,  is  the  equivalent  of 
temptation.  Life  is  in  some  sort  always  sin,  for  one  cannot 
eat,  one  cannot  even  breathe  without  some  measure  of 
affirmation  of  low  and  egoistic  instincts.  Moreover  ascetic- 
ism logically  leads  nowhere,  to  negation  of  life ;  the  most 
thorough-going  ascetics  are  the  Yoghis  of  India,  who  attain 
the  point  of  living  without  air  or  food  and  of  going  down 
alive  into  the  tomb.'  And  in  believing  himself  thus  to 
have  realized  absolute  renunciation,  what  the  ascetic  actually 
realized  is  complete  and  perfect  egoism,  for  the  last  drops 
of  vegetative  life  which  flow  in  his  veins  circulate  for  him 
alone  and  not  a  shiver  of  his  heart  is  directed  beyond  himself; 
by  impoverishing  and  annihilating  his  life,  he  has  suppressed 
the  generosity  that  fulness  of  life  produced  ;  in  his  endeavour 
to  kill  sin  he  has  slaughtered  charity.     The  real  moral  and 

'  The  fact  has  been  verified  by  the  English  authorities  and  has  been  commented 
on  by  the  physiologist  W.  Preyer  {Uher  die  Erforschimg  des  Lebens,  Jena,  and 
Samrnlung physiologischer  Abhandlungen).  Yoghis  who  have  attained  the  highest 
degree  of  perfection,  and  are  insensible  to  cold  and  to  heat  and  have  contracted,  by 
a  series  of  experiments,  the  habit  of  breathing  almost  not  at  all,  have  been  buried 
alive  and  resuscitated  at  the  end  of  some  weeks.  When  they  were  reawakened  a 
heightening  of  the  temperature  was  noticed  as  in  the  case  of  the  reawaking  of 
hibernating  mammals,  and  it  is  indeed  to  the  phenomena  of  hibernation  that  this 
strange  voluntary  suspension  of  animation  most  closely  approaches — this  mystical 
return  to  a  life  merely  vegetative,  this  absorption  in  the  bosom  of  the  uncon- 
scious,  where  the  Yoghis    hopes    to    find  God.      As  a  preliminary  discipline    the 


DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIOUS  MORALITY.  215 

religious  ideal  does  not  consist  in  denying  one's  self  every- 
thing in  order  to  deny  one's  self  what  is  sinful.  There  is 
nothing  absolutely  evil  in  us,  except  excess  ;  when  we  apply 
the  knife  to  our  hearts,  we  should  have  but  one  aim,  the 
one  which  the  gardener  has  in  view  in  pruning  trees,  to 
increase  our  real  power.  Our  manifold  desires  should  all  be 
satisfied  at  one  time  or  another  ;  we  should  take  example  from 
the  mother  who  forces  herself  to  eat  that  she  may  watch 
to  the  end  at  the  bedside  of  her  dying  child.  Whoever  pur- 
poses to  live  for  others  besides  himself,  will  find  no  time  to 
sulk  ;  for  w^hoever  possesses  a  heart  sufficientl}^  great  no  func- 
tion in  life  is  impure.  Every  moral  rule  should  be  a  recon- 
ciliation between  egoism  and  altruism,  original  sin  and  ideal 
sanctity  ;  and  to  accomplish  this  reconciliation  it  suf^ces  to 
show  that  each  of  our  manifold  and  mutually  exclusive 
desires,  if  carried  to  the  extreme,  contradicts  itself  ;  that  our 
desires  need  each  other,  that  when  nature  endeavours  to  rise 
above  herself  she  inevitably  falls  headlong.  To  govern  one's 
self  means  to  reconcile  all  parties.  Ormuzd  and  Ahriman, 
spirit  and  nature,  are  not  so  hostile  to  each  other  as  seems  to 
be  believed,  and  either  of  them  indeed  is  powerless  without 
the  other.  They  are  two  gods  whose  origin  is  the  same,  they 
are  immortal,  and  for  immortals  some  means  of  accommoda- 
tion must  be  found.  Complete  and  unremunerated  sacrifice 
never  can  be  adopted  as  a  rule  of  life  ;  never  can  be  more  than 
a  sublime  conception,  a  spark  in  some  individual  existence, 
consuming  the  fuel  it  feeds  upon  and  then  disappearing 
and    leaving  behind,   face   to   face,   the   two    great  principles, 

Yoghis  diminishes  little  by  little  the  quantity  of  air  and  light  necessarj'  to  his  life  ; 
he  lives  in  a  cell  which  is  lit  and  ventilated  by  no  more  than  a  single  cliink  ;  he 
minimizes  all  movement  in  order  to  mimimize  the  necessity  of  respiration;  he  ioes 
not  speak  except  to  repeat  to  himself  twelve  thousand  times  a  day  the  mystic 
name  of  Om  ;  he  remains  for  hours  together  motionless  as  a  statue.  He  prac- 
tises breathing  over  again  and  again  the  same  body  of  air,  and  the  longer  the 
period  between  inspiration  and  expiration,  the  greater  his  sanctity  !  Finally  he 
carefully  seals  all  the  openings  of  his  body  with  wax  and  cotton  and  closes  *he 
opening  of  the  throat  with  the  tongue,  which  certain  incisions  permit  him  to  fold 
over  backward,  and  finally  falls  into  a  lethargy  in  wiiich  the  movements  of  respira- 
tion may  be  suspended  without  the  thread  of  life  positively  being  severed. 


21 6     DISSOLUTION  OF  liELIGIOA'S  LV  EXISTIXG  SOCIETIES. 

a  conscious  reconciliation  of  which  constitutes  the  moral 
mean. 

The  very  nature  of  the  conceptions  confirms  what  we  have 
just  said   respecting    temptation  and  sin.     Directly    or    indi- 
rectly, every  idea  is  a  suggestion,  an  incitement  to 

Eesnlts  a  priori  ■"  •'  °°  . 

from  the  nature  of  action;  it  tends  even  to  take  exclusive  possession 
^^^^^'  of  us,  to  become  a  fixed  idea,  to  employ  us  as  a 

means  to  its  own  end,  to  realize  itself  often  in  spite  of  us; 
but  as  our  thought  embraces  all  things  in  the  universe,  high 
and  low,  we  are  incessantly  solicited  to  act  in  opposite  direc- 
tions ;  temptation,  from  this  point  of  view,  is  simply  the  law  of 
thought,  and  the  law  of  sensibility.  And  ascetics  and  priests 
have  endeavoured  as  a  means  of  struggling  against  temptation 
to  confine  human  thought,  to  prevent  it  from  playing  freely 
about  the  things  of  this  world.  But  the  things  of  this  world 
are  precisely  those  which  are  always  present,  which  solicit  us 
most  strongly  and  constantly.  And  the  greater  our  effort  to 
exclude  them  from  the  mind,  the  greater  their  power  over  us. 
There  is  nothing  one  sees  more  clearly  than  what  one  resolves 
not  to  look  at ;  there  is  nothing  that  makes  the  heart  beat  so 
quickly  as  what  one  resolves  not  to  love.  The  cure  for  tempta- 
tion, so  persistently  demanded  by  essentially  religious  people^ 
is  not  restriction  of  thought  but  enlargement  of  thought.  The 
visible  world  cannot  be  hidden,  it  is  folly  to  attempt  it,  but  it 
can  be  magnified  indefinitely.  Incessant  discoveries  may  be 
made  in  it  and  the  peril  of  certain  points  of  view  counteracted 
by  the  novelty  and  attractiveness  of  certain  others,  and  the 
known  universe  lost  sight  of  in  the  abyss  of  the  unknown. 
Thought  bears  its  own  antidote — a  science  sufficiently  great 
is  more  trustworthy  than  innocence ;  a  boundless  curiosity  is 
the  cure  for  all  petty  curiosities.  An  eye  which  reaches  the 
stars  will  not  aim  long  at  a  low  mark ;  it  is  protected  by  its 
command  of  space  and  light,  for  light  is  purifying.  By  mak- 
ing temptation  infinite  one  makes  it  salutary  and  in  the  best 
sense  divine.  Asceticism,  and  the  artificial  maturity  that 
comes  of  a  dissolute  life,  often  amount  to  the  same  thing.  One 
must  keep  one's  youth  and  memory  green,  and  one's  heart 
open.     "  I    was   not   a  man    before   years  of  manhood,"    said 


DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIOUS  MORALITY.  217 

Marcus  Aurelius.  Both  asceticism  and  debauchery  make  men 
precociously  old,  we.iii  them  from  love  and  enthusiasm  for  the 
things  of  this  world.  The  island  of  Cythere  and  the  desert  of 
Thebes  are  alike  deserts.  To  remain  young  long,  to  remain 
a  child  even  in  the  spontaneity  and  affectionateness  of  one's 
heart,  to  preserve  not  in  externals,  but  in  "  internals,"  some- 
thing of  lightness  and  gaiety  is  the  best  means  of  dominating 
life  ;  for  what  is  more  powerful  than  youth  ?  One  must  neither 
stiffen  one's  self,  nor  bristle  up  against  life,  nor  cowardly  aban- 
don one's  self  to  it ;  one  must  take  it  as  it  is,  that  is  to  say, 
according  to  the  popular  maxim,  "as  it  comes,"  and  welcome 
it  with  an  infant's  smile  without  any  other  care  than  to  maintain 
one's  possession  of  one's  self,  in  order  that  one  may  possess  all 
things. 

III.   Morality  and   religion  are   inseparable  in  all   historical 
faiths,    and     the     essential    act     of     subjective    worship,    the 

fundamental      rite      commanded     by     religious 

morality,  is  prayer. 
To  analyze  prayer  into  all  its  component  elements  would 
be  very    difficult    and    far    from    simple.     Prayer    may  be  an 

almost   mechanical  accomplishment   of  the    rite. 
Kinds  of  prayer     j       ^j^bbling   of  vain   words,   and   as   such   it    is 

despicable  even  from  the  point  of  view  of 
religion.  It  may  be  an  egoistic  demand,  and  as  such  it  is 
mean,  simply.  It  may  be  an  act  of  naive  faith  in  beliefs  more 
or  less  popular  and  irrational,  and  on  this  score  its  value  is  so 
slight  that  it  may  be  neglected.  But  it  may  be  also  the 
disinterested  outpouring  of  a  soul  which  believes  itself  to  be 
in  some  fashion  or  other  serving  someone  else,  acting  upon 
the  world  by  the  ardour  of  its  faith,  conferring  a  gift,  an  offer- 
ing, devoting  something  of  itself  to  someone  else.  Therein 
lies  the  grandeur  of  prayer:  it  is  then  no  more  than  one  of 
the  forms  of  charity  and  the  love  of  mankind.  But  suppose 
it  should  be  demonstrated  that  this  especial  form  of  charity 
is  illusory,  does  one  imagine  that  the  very  principle  of  charity 
itself  will  by  that  fact  receive  a  check  ? 

Many  arguments  have  been  urged   in  favour_of__£rayer,  but 

1^  OF   TBF  '^ 

UNIVERSITY 


*£LCALlFORHiL 


2i8      DISSOLUTIOX  OF  RELIGION'S  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

the    majority    of    them    are    quite    external    and     superficial. 
Prayer,   it    has    been    said,   as  being  a  demand    on    a    special 

Superficiality  of   P^ovidence,  is  sovereignly  consoling;  it  is  one  of 
most  pleas  in  its     the  sweetest  of  the  satisfactions  incident  to  reli. 

®  ^  ■  gious  faith.     One  who  had  been  converted  to  free- 

thought  said  to  me  recently,  "  There  is  but  one  thing  in  my 
former  faith  that  I  regret,  and  that  is  that  I  can  no  longer 
pray  for  you  and  imagine  that  I  am  serving  you."  Assuredly 
it  is  sad  to  lose  a  faith  which  consoled  one  ;  but  suppose  that . 
someone  believed  himself  to  possess  the  fairy-wand  and  to  be 
able  to  save  the  world.  Some  fine  morning  he  finds  himself 
undeceived,  he  finds  himself  alone  in  the  world  with  no  power 
at  his  disposal  more  mysterious  than  that  of  his  ten  fingers 
and  his  brain.  He  cannot  but  regret  his  imaginary  power,  but 
he  will  labour  nevertheless  to  acquire  a  real  power  and  the 
loss  of  his  illusions  will  but  serve  as  a  stimulus  to  his  will. 
It  is  always  dangerous  to  believe  that  one  possesses  a  power 
that  one  has  not,  for  it  hinders  one  in  some  degree  from 
knowing  and  exercising  those  that  one  has.  The  men  of 
former  times,  the  times  of  absolute  monarchy,  who  had 
access  to  the  ear  of  princes,  possessed  a  power  analogous  to 
that  which  the  believers  on  their  knees  in  temples  still  believe 
themselves  to  possess;  this  power,  in  the  case  of  kings,  their 
confidential  ministers  have  lost  as  the  result  of  purely  terres- 
trial revolutions;  and  have  they  thereby  been  diminished  in 
their  dignity  as  moral  beings?  No,  a  man  is  morally  greater 
as  a  citizen  than  as  a  courtier;  one  is  greater  as  the  result  of 
what  one  does  one's  self  only,  or  attempts  to  do,  and  not  as 
the  result  of  what  one  endeavours  to  obtain  from  a  master. 

Will  the   individual  never   be    able  to   do  without  prayers 

conceived  as  a  constant  communication  w^ith  God,  as  a  daily 

confession,  a  faith  in  Him  and  before  Him  ?     He 

Arguments  for  .  ....  ,  , 

its  utility  equally    Will  probably  not  renounce  it  until  he  is  capable 

S°°J^°' ^''™^^^'   of  existing  without    it.     Arguments  to  prove  the 
confession.  ...  . 

practical  utility  of  prayer,  conceived  as  a  direct 
communication  with  one's  living  ideal,  would  all  hold  equally 
good  in  favour  of  Catholic  confession  before  the  priest  as  a 
realization  of  the  moral  ideal.     Nevertheless,  when  Protestants 


\ 


DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIOUS  MORALITY.  219 

supressed  the  confession  they  gave  a  fresh  development  to 
moral  austerity  :  the  morality  of  Protestant  peoples,  which  is 
defended  only  by  the  voice  of  conscience,  is  not  inferior  to 
that  of  Catholic  peoples.'  Is  it  any  more  necessary  for  the 
purpose  of  ascertaining  one's  faults  and  curing  them  to  kneel 
before  a  personified  and  anthropomorphic  God  than  before  a 
priest  beneath  the  roof  of  a  church  ?  Experience  alone  can 
decide,  and  a  number  of  men  seem  already  successfully  to  have 
tried  the  experiment.  The  scrutiny  of  a  philosophical  con- 
science has  been  proved  to  be  sufficient. 

Finally    it    has    been    said    that    prayer,  even  conceived  as 
destitute  of  objective  effect,  nevertheless  justifies  itself  by  the 

comfort  it  affords  ;  one  has  attempted  to  argue 
jectivereUef  ^^  "   ^^   ^^^   favour  on  purely  subjective  grounds,  but 

prayer  runs  the  risk  precisely  of  losing  its  power 
as  a  consoler  the  instant  one  ceases  to  believe  in  its  objective 
efficiency.  If  nobody  hears  us,  who  will  continue  to  offer  up 
petitions  simply  to  ease  the  burden  of  his  own  heart?  If  the 
orator  is  uplifted  by  the  sympathy  of  the  assembly  which 
listens  to  him,  does  it  follow  that  he  will  experience  the  same 
effect  if  he  deliver  his  oration  in  the  void  with  the  knowledge 
that  his  thought,  his  word,  his  emotion,  are  lost,  and  spend 
themselves  in  space  ? 

If  prayer  is  really  to  be  its  own  reward,  it  must  not  consist 
of  a  demand  addressed  to  some  Being  exterior  to  one's  self,  it 

must  be  a  subjective  act  of  love,  what  Christianity 
ity° he  durable"  calls  an  act  of  charity.  Charity  is  the  eternal 
element ia  prayer,  element  in  prayer.  To  ask  for  something  for 
one's  self  is  a  thing  difficult  to  justify  ;  to  ask  for  something 
for  someone  else  is  at  least  a  beginning  of  disinterested  con- 
duct. "  How  much  longer  thy  prayers  grow,  grandmama,  day 
by  day!  "  "  The  number  of  those  for  whom  I  pray  increases 
day  by  day."  Over  and  above  this  element  of  charity,  prayer 
contains  a  certain  beauty — a  beauty  which  will  not  disappear 
with  the  disappearance  of  the  superstitions  which  have  clustered 
about  it.  The  moral  beauty  of  prayer  is  intimately  bound  up 
with    certain    profound    human    sentiments:    one    prays    for 

'  See  below  chapter  iv. 


2  20      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

somebody  whom  one  loves ;  one  prays  out  of  pity  or  of  affec- 
tion ;  one  prays  in  despair,  in  hope,  in  gratitude  ;  so  that  the 
most  elevated  of  human  sentiments  sometimes  ally  them- 
selves with  prayer  and  colour  it.  This  tension  of  one's  whole 
being  at  such  times  finds  its  way  out  upon  the  visage,  and 
transfigures  it  with  the  intense  expression  that  certain  painters 
have  loved  to  catch  and  to  perpetuate.'  What  is  most  beauti- 
ful and  probably  also  what  is  best  in  prayer  is,  more  than  all 
else,  the  human  and  moral  element  in  it.  If  there  is  thus  an 
essential  charity  in  genuine  prayer,  charity  of  the  lips  is  not 
enough,  that  of  the  heart  and  hands  must  be  added  to  it,  and 
that  is  to  say  in  the  last  resort  action  must  be  substituted 
for  it. 

Prayer  for  love  and  charity  tends  increasingly  to  find  vent 
in  action:  a  verification  of  this  fact  may  be  found  in  history. 

Formerly,    in     a    moment   of     distress,   a  pagan 
Increasing  ten-  i  i    i  .1  1  .  1  r 

dencyforsnch        woman  would  have    thought   only  of  appeasing 

prayer  to  express  the  anger  of  the  Gods  by  some  blood  sacrifice, 
itself  in  action,         i        ^1  1  r  •  ,  r    1 

by  the  murder   01  some  mnocent  member  of  the 

larger  mammals  ;  in  the   Middle  Ages  she  would  have  made  a 

vow  or   founded  a  chapel — things  still  vain   and  powerless  to 

alleviate   the  misery   of  this   world  ;    in    our    days  she  would 

think  rather,  if  she  were   a  person  of   some  elevation  of  spirit, 

of  giving  money  in  charity,  of  founding  an  establishment  for 

the  instruction  of  the  poor  or  the  care  of  the  infirm.     One  sees 

in  that  fact  the  march  of  progress  in  religious  ideas  ;  the  time 

will  come  when  such  actions  will  no  longer  be  accomplished 

for  a  directly  interested  end   but   as  a  sort  of   exchange  with 

the    divinity,  a    traf^c   of    kindness ;    they  will  constitute    a 

recognized  part  of  public  worship,  the  essence  of  worship  will 

be  charity.     Pascal  asks,  somewhere,  why  God  has  bestowed 

praj'er   upon   man,  why   God  has  commanded  man   to   pray; 

and  he  replies  profoundly  enough  :  "  To  give  him  the  dignity 

of  seeing  himself  as  a  cause  "  ;  but  if  he  w^ho  demands  benefits 

by  prayer   possessed  formerly  the  dignity  of  being,  in  his  own 

'  This,  however,  is  exceptional  ;  in  church,  during  the  services,  the  majority  of  the 
faces  remain  inexpressive,  for  the  reason  that  prayer  with  the  majority  of  the  faithful 
is  almost  always  mechanical. 


DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIOUS  MORALITY.  22 1 

right,  a  cause,  how  much  greater  is  the  dignity  of  him  who  by 
the  exercise  of  his  own  moral  will  procures  the  object  of  his 
desire  ?  And  if  to  be  the  cause  of  one's  own  well-being  be  thus 
the  essence  of  prayer,  of  that  which  brings  man  nearest  to 
God,  of  that  which  lifts  man  nearest  to  His. level— may  one  not 
say  that  the  most  disinterested,  the  most  sacred,  the  most 
human,  the  most  divine  of  prayers  is  moral  conduct?  In 
Pascal's  opinion,  it  is  true,  moral  conduct  presupposes  two 
terms,  duty  and  power,  and  man  cannot  always  do  what  he 
should  ;  but  one  must  break  with  the  antique  opposition 
established  by  Christianity,  between  the  sentiment  of  duty  and 
the  practical  powerlessness  of  a  man  shorn  of  all  adventitious 
aid — shorn  of  grace.  In  reality  the  sentiment  of  duty  is,  in 
and  of  itself,  the  first  vague  consciousness  of  a  power  existent 
in  us,  of  a  force  which  tends  to  achieve  its  own  realization.' 
Consciousness  of  his  power  for  good  and  of  the  power  of  the 
ideal  unite  in  man,  for  this  ideal  is  no  more  than  the  projection, 
the  objectification.  of  the  highest  power  within,  the  form  that 
that  power  takes  in  reflective  intelligence.  Every  volition  is 
at  bottom  no  more  than  a  capability  of  some  sort  in  labour, 
an  action  in  the  stage  of  germination  :  the  will  to  do  good,  if  it 
is  conscious  of  its  own  power,  has  no  need  to  await  the  prompt- 
ing of  external  grace  ;  it  is  itself  its  own  grace  ;  by  the  very 
fact  of  its  birth  it  becomes  efficacious  ;  by  the  very  fact  of  wish- 
ins:,  nature  creates.  Pascal  conceived  the  moral  end,  which 
duty  places  before  us,  too  much  after  the  manner  of  a  physical 
and  external  object,  that  one  might  be  able  to  look  upon  but 
not  to  attain.  "  One  directs  one's  looks  on  high,"  says  he,  in  his 
"  Pensees,"  "  but  one  rests  upon  the  sand  and  the  earth  will  slip 
from  under  one,  and  one  shall  fall  with  one's  eyes  on  heaven." 
But  might  not  one  respond  that  the  heaven  of  which  Pascal 
is  here  speaking,  the  heaven  we  carry  in  our  own  bosoms,  is 
something  quite  different  from  the  heaven  which  we  perceive 
spread  out  above  our  heads?  Must  it  not  here  be  said  that  to 
see  is  to  touch  and  to  possess;  that  a  sight  of  the  moral  end 
renders  possible  a  progress  toward  it ;  that  the  resting  point 
one  finds  in  the  moral  will,  the  most  invincible  of  all  the  forms 

'  See  on  this  point  our  Esquisse  J'utie  morale  sans  obligation,  p.  27. 


2  22      DISSOLUTIOiV  OF  RELIGIOiVS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

of  volition,  will  not  give  way  beneath  one,  and  that  one  cannot 
fall,  in  one's  progress  toward  goodness  and  that  in  this  sense 
to  lift  one's  eyes  toward  heaven  is  already  to  have  set  one's 
feet  on  the  way  thither." 

There  remains  one  more  aspect  under  which  prayer  may  be 
considered.  It  may  be  regarded  as  a  species  of  spiritual  eleva- 
tion, a  communication  with  the  universe  or  with 
for^pJiyer^"""  God.'  Prayer  has  in  all  times  been  glorified  as 
a  means  of  uplifting  the  whole  being  to  a  plane, 
that  it  otherwise  would  have  been  unable  to  attain.  The  best 
of  us,  as  Amiel  said  not  long  since,  find  complete  development 
and  self-knowledge  in  prayer  alone. 

One  must  be  on  one's  guard  against  a  multitude  of  illusions 

in  this  connection,  and  must  carefully  distinguish  between  two 

Distinction  be-     ^^^^  different  things:   religious  ecstasy  and  philo- 

tween  religious      sophical    meditation.     One  of  the  consequences 

ecstasy  andphilo-       c  r  j  i  i    j  [    ^\. 

sophical  medita-  ^^  o^r  profounder  knowledge  of  the  nervous 
tion.  system  is  an  increasing  contempt  for  ecstasy  and 

for  all  of  those  states  of  nervous  intoxication  'or  even  of  intel- 
lectual intoxication  which  were  formerly  regarded  by  the  multi- 
tude, and  sometimes  even  by  philosophers,  as  superhuman, 
and  truly  divine.  Religious  ecstasy,  so  called,  may  be  a  phe- 
nomenon so  purely  physical  that  it  suffices  to  ^pply  a  bit  of 
volatile  oil  of  cherry  laurel  to  induce  it  in  certain  subjects,  and 
to  fill  them  with  ecstatic  beatitude,  and  make  them  pray  and 
weep  and  kneel.  Such  was  the  fact  in  the  case  of  a  hysteric 
patient,  a  hardened  courtesan  of  Jewish  origin  ;  it  sufificed 
even  to  induce  in  her  definite  visions,  even  such  as  that  of  the 
girl  with  golden  hair  in  the  blue  robe  starred  with  gold.^  The 
intoxication  indulged  in  by  the  followers  of  Dionysius  in 
Greece,  like  that  indulged  in  by  hasheesh-eaters,  was  no  more 
than  a  violent  means  of  inducing  ecstasy  and  of  entering  into 

'  "  Oh,  God  "  said  Diderot,  at  the  end  of  his  Interpretation  de  la  nature,  "  I  do 
not  know  if  Thou  existest,  but  I  shall  bear  myself  as  if  Thou  sawest  into  my  soul  ;  I 
shall  act  as  if  I  felt  myself  in  Thy  presence  ...  I  ask  nothing  of  Thee  in  this 
world,  for  the  course  of  things  is  necessary  in  and  of  its  own  nature,  if  Thou  dost 
not  exist,  and  necessary  if  Thou  dost,  by  Thy  decree." 

'  Report  of  MM.  Bourru  and  Burot  au  Congrh  scientifique  de  Grenoble, 
August  i8,  1885. 


DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIOUS  MORALITY.  223 

communication  with  the  supernatural  world.'  In  India, ^  and 
among  the  Christians,  fasting  is  practised  to  attain  the  same 
end,  namely  a  nervous  excitation  of  the  nervous  systems.  The 
macerations  of  the  anchorite  were,  says  Wundt,  a  solitary 
orgie,  in  the  course  of  which  monks  and  nuns  ardently  pressed 
in  their  arms  fantastic  images  of  the  Virgin  and  the  Saviour. 
According  to  a  legend  of  Krishnaism,  the  Queen  Udayapura, 
Mira  Bai,  being  pressed  to  abjure  her  God,  threw  herself  at 
the  feet  of  the  statue  of  Krishna  and  made  this  prayer  :  "  I 
have  quitted  for  thee  my  love,  my  possessions,  my  crown  ;  I 
come  to  thee,  oh,  my  refuge  !  Take  me."  The  statue  listened 
motionless  ;  suddenly  it  opened  and  Mira  disappeared  inside 
of  it.  To  vanish  thus  into  the  bosom  of  one's  God  is — is  it 
not  ? — the  perfect  ideal  of  the  highest  human  religions.  All  of 
them  have  proposed  it  to  man,  as  a  prime  object  of  desire,  to 
die  in  God  ;  all  of  them  have  seen  the  higher  life  as  a  form  of 
ecstasy;  whereas  the  fact  is  that,  in  a  state  of  ecstasy,  one 
descends  on  the  contrary  to  a  lower  and  a  vegetative  plane  of 
existence,  and  that  this  apparent  fusion  with  God  is  no  more 
than  a  return  to  a  primitive  inertia,  to  a  mineral  impassibility,  to 
a  statuesque  petrifaction.  One  may  believe  one's  self  uplifted 
in  a  state  of  ecstasy,  and  mistake  for  an  exaltation  of  thought 
what  is  in  reality  no  more  than  a  sterile  nervous  excitement. 
The  trouble  is  that  there  is  no  means  of  measuring  the  real 
force  and  extent  of  thought.  Under  normal  circumstances 
the  only  means  that  exist  are  action  ;  one  who  does  not  act  is 
inevitably  inclined  to  exaggerate  the  value  of  his  thought. 
Amiel   himself    did    not  escape    from    this   danger.     Fancied 

'  A  defender  of  the  use  of  hasheesh  scientifically  employed,  M.  Giraud,  who 
conceives  that  it  is  possible  to  induce  ecstasy  at  will,  and  to  regulate  it  by  medical 
doses,  writes  us  with  enthusiasm  :  "  A  bit  of  hasheesh  dispenses  with  painful 
mystical  expedients  to  induce  ecstasy.  There  is  no  further  need  of  asceticism  ;  the 
result  is  an  intoxication,  but  a  sacred  intoxication,  which  is  nothing  else  than  an 
excess  of  activity  in  the  higher  centres."  We  believe  that  every  sort  of  drunken- 
ness, far  from  possessing  a  sacred  character,  will  constitute  for  ever  and  always,  in 
the  eyes  of  science,  a  morbid  state,  in  no  sense  enviable  from  any  rational  point  of 
view,  by  an  individual  in  normal  health  ;  the  constant  employment  of  stimulants 
will  exhaust  the  nervous  system  and  throw  it  out  of  order,  as  the  daily  employment 
of  nux  vomica  will,  in  the  long  run,  destroy  the  power  of  a  Ijealthy  stomach. 

'  See  above  what  we  have  already  said  in  regard  to  the  Yoghis  and  asceticism. 


2  24      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

superiority  disappears  the  moment  a  thought  seeks  expression 
of  whatsoever  kind.  The  dream  that  is  told  becomes  absurd  ; 
the  ecstasy  in  which  one  retains  complete  control  of  one's 
mind,  in  which  one  endeavours  to  take  stock  of  the  confused 
emotions  one  experiences,  vanishes  before  us  and  leaves 
behind  no  more  than  a  fatigue,  a  certain  subjective  obscurity, 
like  a  winter  twilight,  which  precipitates  a  frost  upon  the 
window-panes  that  intercepts  the  last  rays  of  the  sun.  My 
most  beautiful  verses  will  never  be  written,  the  poet  says  :  "  Of 
my  work,  the  better  part  lies  buried  in  myself.'"  That  is  an 
illusion  by  which  dream  seems  always  superior  to  reality  ;  an 
illusion  of  the  same  sort  as  that  which  makes  us  attach  so  much 
value  to  certain  hours  of  religious  exaltation.  The  truth  is 
that  the  poet's  best  verses  are  those  which  he  has  written  with 
his  own  hand,  his  best  thought  is  that  which  has  possessed 
vitality  enough  to  find  its  formula  and  its  music  ;  the  whole  of 
him  lies  in  his  poetry.  And  we  also,  we  are  in  our  actions,  in 
our  words,  in  the  glance  of  an  eye  or  the  accent  of  a  word,  in 
a  gesture,  in  the  palm  of  a  hand  open  in  charity.  To  exist  is  to 
act,  and  a  thought  which  is  incapable  of  expression  is  an  abor- 
tion which  has  never  really  been  alive  and  has  never  merited 
to  live.  In  the  same  way  the  true  God  is  also  the  one  w^ho 
can  be  domesticated  in  one's  own  heart,  who  does  not  fly  the 
face  of  reflective  consciousness,  who  does  not  show  himself  in 
dreams  alone,  whom  one  does  not  invoke  as  a  phantom  or  a 
demon.  Our  ideal  ought  not  to  be  some  passing  and  fantas- 
tic apparition,  but  a  positive  creation  of  our  spirit;  we  must  be 
able  to  contemplate  it  without  destroying  it,  to  feed  our  eyes 
upon  it  as  upon  a  reality.  For  the  rest  this  ideal  of  goodness 
and  of  perfection,  persisting  as  it  does  in  the  face  of  inner 
scrutiny,  has  no  need  of  an  objective  existence  m  some  sort 
material,  to  produce  its  proper  effect  upon  the  spirit.  The 
profoundest  love  subsists  for  those  who  have  been,  as  well  as 
for  those  who  are,  and  reaches  out  into  the  future  as  well  as 
into  the  present.  Nay,  it  even  in  a  manner  outstretches  the 
measure  of  existence  and  develops  a  power  of  divining  and 
loving  the  ideal  that  shall  some  day  be.  Maternal  love  is  a 
model  now  as  always  for  all  moral  beings,  in  that  it  does  not 

'  M.  SuUy-Prudhomme.   ' 


DISSOLUTIOA'   OF  RELIGIOUS  MORALITY.  225 

await  the  birth  of  its  object  before  making  the  first  steps  in  its 

service.     Long  before  ti:e  child  is  born  the  mother  forms  an 

image  of  it  in  her  fancy,  and  loves  it  and  gives  herself  to  it  in 

advance. 

For  a  truly  elevated   spirit   the   hours  consecrated  to  the, 

formation  of  its  ideal   will  always  be  precious  hours  of  patient 

attention   and    meditation,    not   only   upon   what 

The  highest        ^^^  knows  or  does  not  know,  but  upon  what  one 
form  of  prayer,  ^ 

hopes  and  will  attempt ;  upon  the  ideal  seeking 

for  birth  through  one's  instrumentality,  and  leaning  upon 
one's  heart.  The  highest  form  of  prayer  is  thought.  Every 
form  of  philosophic  meditation  possesses,  like  prayer,  an  ele- 
ment of  consolation,  not  directly,  for  it  may  well  deal  with  the 
saddest  of  realities,  but  indirectly  because  it  enlarges  the 
heart.  Every  aperture  broken  open  upon  the  infinite  braces 
us  like  a  current  in  the  open  air.  Our  personal  sorrows  are 
lost  in  the  immensity  of  the  infinite,  as  the  waters  of  the  earth 
are  lost  in  the  immensity  of  the  sea. 

As  for  those  who  are  not  capable  of  thinking  for  themselves, 
of  standing  spiritually  on  their  own  feet ;  it  will  always  be 
good  for  them  to  retrace  the  thoughts  which  appear  to 
them  to  be  the  highest  and  the  noblest  product  of  the  human 
mind.  |On  this  account  the  Protestant  custom  of  reading  and 
of  meditating  on  the  Bible  is,  in  principle,  excellent ;  the  book 
however  is  ill-chosen.  '  But  it  is  good  that  man  should 
habituate  himself  to  read  or  to  re-read  a  certain  number  of 
times  a  day,  or  a  week,  something  else  than  a  newspaper  or  a 
novel ;  that  he  should  turn  now  and  then  to  some  serious  sub- 
ject of  meditation  and  dwell  on  it.  Perhaps  the  day  will  come 
when  every  one  independently  will  compose  a  Bible  of  his  own  ; 
will  select  from  among  the  works  of  the  greatest  human 
thinkers  the  passages  which  especially  appeal  to  him,  and  will 
read  them  and  re-read  and  assimilate  them.  To  read  a  serious 
and  high-minded  book  is  to  deal  at  first  hand  with  the  greatest 
of  human  thoughts;  to  admire  is  to  pray,  and  it  is  a  form  of 
prayer  that  is  within  the  power  of  all  of  us. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

RELIGION  AND   NON-RELIGION  AMONG  THE   PEOPLE. 

t 

I.  Is  religious  sentiment  an  innate  and  imperishable  possession  of 
humanity  ? — Frequent  confusion  of  a  sentiment  for  religion  with 
a  sentiment  for  philosophy  and  morals — Renan — Max  Muller — 
Difference  between  the  evolution  of  belief  in  the  individual  and 
the  evolution  of  belief  in  the  race — Will  the  disappearance  of  faith 
leave  a  void  behind  ? 

II.  Will  the  dissolution  of  religion  result  in  a  dissolution  of  moral- 
ity among  the  people  ? — Is  religion  the  sole  safeguard  of  social 
authority  and  public  morality  ? — Christianity  and  socialism — 
Relation  between  non-religion  and  immorality,  according  to 
statistics. 

III.  Is  Protestantism  a  necessary  transition  stage  between  religion 
and  free-thought? — Projects  for  ProtestantizingFrance — Michelet, 
Quinet,  De  Laveleye,  Renouvier,  and  Pillon — Intellectual,  moral, 
and  political  superiority  of  Protestantism — Utopian  character  of 
the  project — Uselessness,  for  purposes  of  morals,  of  substituting 
one  religion  for  another — Is  the  possession  of  religion  a  condi- 
tion sine  qua  non  of  superiority  in  the  struggle  for  existence  } — 
Objections  urged  against  France  and  the  French  Revolution  by 
Matthew  Arnold  ;  Greece  and  Judea  compared,  France  and 
Protestant  nations  compared — Critical  examination  of  Matthew 
Arnold's  theoiy — Cannot  free-thought,  science,  and  art  evolve 
their  respective  ideals  from  within  ? 

We  have  seen  the  dissolution  which  menaces  rehgious 
dogmatism,  and  even  rehgious  morahty,  in  modern  societies. 
And  from  the  very  fact  of  such  dissolution  certain  more  or  less 
disturbing  social  problems  arise.  Is  it  really  a  perilous  thing, 
this  gradual  enfeeblement  of  what  has  so  long  served  as  the 
basis  of  social  and  domestic  virtue?  Certain  people  delight  in 
subjecting  nine-tenths  of  the  human  race  to  a  sort  of  ostracism. 
They  declare  in  advance  that  the  people,  and  all  women  and 
children,  are  incapable   of  rising  to  a  conception  which  it  is 

226 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AMONG  THE  PEOPLE.      227 

recognized  that  a  lar<^e  number  of  men  have  attained.  The 
mass  of  the  people,  it  is  said,  and  women  and  children,  must  be 
appealed  to  on  the  side  of  the  imagination  ;  only,  one  must 
take  care  to  choose  the  least  dangerous  form  of  appeal  pos- 
sible, for  fear  of  injuring  those  whom  one  means  to  serve.  Let 
us  consider  to  what  extent  this  incapacity  of  the  people,  of 
women  and  children,  for  philosophy  is  capable  of  demonstra- 
tion. It  is  the  more  necessary  in  this  book,  in  that  it  is  the 
sociological  aspect  of  religion  that  is  here  the  subject  of 
investigation. 

/.  Is  religious  sentiment  an   innate  and  imperishable  posses- 
sion of  humanity  / 

In  our  days,  be  it  remarked,  religious  sentiment  has  found 

defenders  among  those  who,  like   Kenan,  Taine,  and  so  many 

others,  are  most  firmly  convinced  of  the  absurd- 
Tendency  to  1101  \ 
regard  religious      ities  of  the  dogmas  themselves,     bo  long  as  such 

beliefs  as  neces-      j^^^j^  occuDv  a  purely  intellectual  point  of  view — 

sary  m  propor-  r  j        i.  j 

tion  to  their  that  is  to  say,  their  real  point  of  view — the  whole  of 

absurdity,  ^j^^  contents  of  religion,  all  the  dogmas,  all  the 

rites  appear  to  them  to  be  so  many  astounding  errors,  a  vast  sys- 
tem of  unconscious,  mutual  deception  ;  but  the  instant,  on  the 
contrary,  they  regard  religion  from  the  point  of  view  of  sensi- 
bility — that  is  to  say,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  masses — 
everything  becomes  justifiable  in  their  eyes  ;  everything  that 
they  would  attack  without  scruple  as  a  bit  of  reasoning  becomes 
sacred  to  them  as  a  bit  of  sentiment,  and  by  a  strange  optical 
illusion  the  absurdity  of  religious  beliefs  becomes  an  additional 
proof  of  their  necessity  ;  the  greater  the  abyss  which  separates 
them  from  the  intelligence  of  the  masses,  the  greater  their  fear 
of  having  this  abyss  filled  up.  They  do  not  for  themselves 
feel  the  need  of  religious  beliefs,  but  on  this  very  account  they 
regard  them  as  indispensable  for  other  people.  They  say, 
"  How  many  irrational  beliefs  the  people  do  have  that  we  get 
along  very  well  without  !  "  And  they  conclude,  therefore, 
"  These  beliefs  must  be  extremely  necessary  to  the  existence 
of  social  life  and  must  correspond  to.a  real  need,  in  order  thus 


228      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

firmly  to  have  implanted  themselves  in  the  Hfe  of  the 
masses."  ' 

Frequently,  along  with  this  belief  in  the  omnipotence  of  the 
religious  sentiment,  there  goes  a  certain  contempt  for  those 

F  th  ht  ^^^^°  ^'^^  ^'^^  victims  of  it ;  they  are  the  serfs  of 
for  an  intellectual  thought,  they  must  remain  attached  to  the  soil, 
aristocracy.  bound    witliin    the    limits  of    their   own    narrow 

horizon.  The  aristocracy  of  science  is  the  most  jealous  of 
aristocracies,  and  a  certain  number  of  our  contemporary  men 
of  science  are  bent  on  carrying  their  coat  of  mail  in  their  brain. 
They  profess  toward  the  mass  of  the  people  a  somewhat  con- 
temptuous charity,  and  propose  to  leave  it  undisturbed  in 
its  beliefs,  immersed  in  prejudice  as  being  the  sole  habitat 
in  which  it  is  capable  of  existing.  For  the  rest,  they  some- 
times envy  the  people  its  eternal  ignorance,  platonically  of 
course.  The  bird  no  doubt  possesses  vague  regrets,  vague 
desires,  when  he  perceives  from  on  high  a  worm  trailing 
tranquilly  through  the  dew,  oblivious  of  heaven ;  but  the 
bird,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  is  always  careful  to  retain  his 
wings,  and  our  superior  men  of  science  do  the  same.  In  their 
judgment,  certain  superior  minds  are  capable  of  enfranchising 
themselves  from  religion,  without  evil  results  following  ;  the 
mass  of  the  people  cannot.     It  is  necessary  to  reserve  freedom 

'  Moreover  when  one  has  passed  one's  life,  or  even  many  years,  in  any  study 
whatsoever,  one  is  inclined  extremely  to  exaggerate  the  importance  of  this  study. 
Greek  professors  believe  that  Greek  is  necessary  to  the  best  interests  o.  humanity. 
When  any  question  arises  of  drawing  up  a  curriculum,  if  the  professors  of  the  several 
studies  are  interrogated,  each  wishes  to  see  his  own  especial  branch  of  science  in  the 
first  rank.  I  remember  that  after  I  myself  had  been  making  Latin  verses  for  some 
years  I  would  have  ranged  myself  voluntarily  among  the  defenders  of  Latin  verse. 
Whenever  anyone  makes  an  especial  study  of  some  v/ork  of  genius,  that  of  an  in- 
dividual, or  a  fortiori  that  of  a  people — Plato,  Aristotle  or  Kant,  the  Vedas  or  the 
Bible,  this  work  tends  to  become  in  his  eyes  the  very  centre  of  human  thought  ;  the 
book  of  which  one  makes  a  special  study  tends  to  become  the  book.  A  priest 
looks  upon  the  whole  of  human  life  as  an  affair  of  faith  simply  ;  knowledge  to  a 
priest  means  simply  a  knowledge  of  the  Fathers  of  the  Church.  It  is  not  astonishing 
that  even  nieniljers  of  the  laity,  who  have  made  religion  the  principal  object  of 
their  studies,  should  be  inclined  to  magnify  its  importance  for  humanity,  or  that 
the  historian  of  religious  thought  should  regard  it  as  including  the  whole  of  human 
life,  and  as  acquiring,  even  independently  of  any  notion  of  revelation,  a  sort  of 
inviolable  character. 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AMONG  THE  PEOPLE.      229 

of  conscience  and  free-thought  for  a  certain  select  few  ;  the 
intellectual  aristocracy  should  defend  itself  by  a  fortified  camp. 
Just  as  the  ancient  Roman  people  demanded  bread  and 
spectacles,  so  modern  people  demand  temples,  and  to  give 
them  temples  is  sometimes  the  sole  means  of  making  them 
forget  that  they  have  not  enough  bread.  The  mass  of 
humanity  must,  as  a  mere  necessity  of  existence,  adore  a  god, 
and  not  simply  god  in  general,  but  a  certain  God  whose  com- 
mandments are  to  be  found  in  a  pocket  Bible.  A  sacred  book, 
that  is  what  is  necessary.  We  are  reminded  of  Mr.  Spencer's 
saying,  that  the  superstition  of  the  present  day  is  the  supersti- 
tion of  the  printed  page  ;  we  believe  that  some  mystical  virtue 
inheres  in  the  four  and  twenty  letters  of  the  alphabet.  When 
a  child  asks  questions  concerning  the  birth  of  his  younger 
brother,  he  is  told  that  one  found  him  under  a  bush  in  the 
garden  ;  and  the  child  is  content.  The  mass  of  the  people  is  a 
big  child  simply,  and  must  be  dealt  with  after  the  same  fashion. 
When  the  mass  of  the  people  asks  questions  about  the  origin 
of  the  world,  hand  it  the  Bible — it  will  there  see  that  the  world 
was  made  by  a  determinate  Being,  who  carefully  adjusted  its 
parts  to  each  other  ;  it  will  learn  the  precise  amount  of  time 
that  was  consumed  in  the  work ;  seven  days,  neither  more  nor 
less  ;  and  it  needs  learn  nothing  further.  Its  mind  is  walled  in 
by  a  good  solid  barrier  which  it  is  forbidden  to  overleap  even 
by  a  look — the  wall  of  faith.  Its  brain  is  carefully  sealed,  the 
sutures  become  firm  with  age,  and  there  is  nothing  to  do  but 
to  begin  the  same  thing  over  again  with  the  next  generation. 
Is  it  then  true  that  religion  is  thus,  for  the  mass  of  mankind, 
either  a  necessary  good  or  a  necessary  evil,  rooted  in  the 
human  heart  ? 

The  belief  that  the  religious  sentiment  is  innate  and  per- 
petual rests  upon  a  confusion  of  the  religious  sentiment  with  the 
CoEfQsion  of  re-    need  that  exists  in  mankind  for  philosophy  and 
ligious  sentiment    morality ;  and,  however  closely  bound  up  together 

with  need  for  .>  '  '  -  it. 

philosophy  and       philosophy  and  morality  and  religion  may  be,  they 
morality.  ^^^  jj^  themselves  distinct  and  separate,  and  tend 

progressively  to  become  more  and  more  manifestly  so. 


230     DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

In  the  first  place,  how  universal  soever  the  religious  senti- 
ment may  appear  to  be,  it  must  be  admitted  that  it   is   not 

innate.     Persons  who  have  passed  their  childhood 
Religious  senti-  ...,,, 

ment  not  innate,     Without    any   communication   with   other  human 

beings,  owing  to  some  corporal  defect,  display  no 

signs  of  the  possession  of  religious  ideas.     Dr.   Kitto,  in  his 

book  on  the  loss  of  the  senses,  cites  the  case  of  an  American 

woman  who  was  congenitally  deaf  and  dumb,  and  who  later, 

after  she  was  capable  of  communicating  with  the  people  about  ' 

her,  was  found  not  to  possess  the  slightest  notion  of  a  divinity. 

The  Rev.  Samuel  Smith,  after  twenty-three  years  intercourse 

with  deaf  mutes,  says  that,  education  apart,  they  possess  no 

notion  of  a   divinity.     Lubbock  and  Baker  cite  a  great  number 

of  examples  of  savages  who  are  in  the  same  case.     According 

to  the  conclusions  set  forth  above,  in  the  beginning  religions 

did  not    spring    ready-made    out    of  the  human  heart :    they 

were  imposed  on  man  from  without,  they  reached  him  through 

his  eyes  and  through  his  ears;  they  contained   no  element  of 

mysticism — in  their  first  steps.     Those  who  derive  mysticism 

from  an   innate   religious  sentiment  reason   a  little  after  the 

manner  of  those  who  in   politics  should  derive   royalty  from 

some  supposed  innate  respect  for  a  royal  race.     Such  a  respect 

is  the  work  of  time,  of  custom,  of  the  sympathetic  tendencies 

of  a  body  of  men  long  trained  in  some  one  direction  ;  there  is 

contained  in  it  no  single  primitive  element,  and  yet  the  power 

of  the  sentiment  of   loyalty  to  a  royal    race  is  considerable. 

The  Revolution  showed  as  much,  in  the  wars  of  the  Vendee. 

But    this    power  wears  out   some  day   or    other,  the  cult  for 

royalty  disappears    with  the  disappearance  of  royalty  itself; 

other   habits   are  formed,  creating  other  sentiments,  and  the 

spectator  is  surprised  to  see  that  a  people  which  was  royalist 

under    monarchy    becomes    republican    under    republicanism. 

The    reign    of  sensibility   over   intelligence  is  not  perpetual ; 

sooner   or   later,  the  position    of   the  two  must  be  reversed  ; 

there  is  an  intellectual  habitat  to  which  we  must  as  inevitably 

adapt  ourselves  as  to  our  physical  habitat.     The  perpetuity 

of  the  religious  sentiment  depends  upon  its  legitimacy.     Born, 

as  it  is,  of  certain  beliefs  and  certain  customs,  its  fate  is  one 


RELIGION  AXD  NON-RELIGION  AMONG  THE  PEOPLE.      231 

with  theirs.  So  long  as  a  belief  is  not  completely  compro- 
mised and  dissolved,  the  sentiment  attaching  to  it  may  no 
doubt  possess  the  power  of  preserving  it,  for  sentiment  always 
plays  the  role  of  protector  and  preserver.  The  human  soul  in 
this  respect  is  analogous  to  society.  Religious  or  political 
sentiments  resemble  iron  braces  buried  in  some  wall  menaced 
with  ruin  ;  they  bind  together  the  disjointed  stones,  and  may 
well  sustain  the  edifice  for  some  time  longer  than,  but  for  them, 
it  would  have  stood  ;  but  let  the  wall  once  be  undermined,  so 
that  it  begins  to  give  way,  and  they  will  fall  with  it.  No  better 
method  could  be  employed  for  securing  the  complete  and 
absolute  extinction  of  a  dogma  or  an  institution  than  to  main- 
tain it  till  the  last  possible  instant ;  its  fall  under  such  circum- 
stances becomes  a  veritable  annihilation.  There  are  periods  in 
history  when  to  preserve  is  not  to  save  but  definitely  to  ruin. 

The  perpetuity  of  religion  has    therefore    in    nowise    been 

demonstrated.     From     the  fact    that    religions    always    have 

existed  it  cannot   be  concluded  that  they  always 

Post  hoc  ergo         jjj   exist;  by  ratiocination  like  that  one  might 

propter  hoc.  '       -^  ° 

indeed  achieve  singular  consequences.  Human- 
ity has  always,  in  all  times  and  places,  associated  certain 
events  with  others  which  chanced  to  accompany  them  ;  post 
hoc  ergo  propter  hoc  is  a  universal  sophism  and  the  principle  of 
all  superstition.  It  is  the  basis  of  the  belief  that  thirteen 
must  not  sit  down  at  table,  that  one  must  be  careful  not  to 
spill  the  salt,  etc.  Certain  beliefs  of  this  kind,  such  as  that 
Friday  is  an  unlucky  day,  are  so  widespread  that  they  sufifice 
sensibly  to  affect  the  average  of  travellers  arriving  in  Paris  on 
that  day  of  the  week  by  train  and  omnibus;  a  number  of 
Parisians  are  averse  to  beginning  a  journey  on  Friday,  or  to 
attending  to  business  that  can  be  postponed  ;  and  it  must  be 
remembered  that  the  intelligence  of  Parisians,  at  least  of  the 
men,  stands  high  in  the  scale.  What  can  one  conclude  from 
that  if  not  that  superstition  is  tenacious  of  life  in  the  bosom 
of  humanity  and  will  long  be  so?  Let  us  reason,  then,  in 
regard  to  superstition  as  in  regard  to  mythological  religion. 
Must  we  not  admit  that  the  need  of  superstition  is  innate  in 
man,  that  it  is  part  of  his  nature,  that  his  life  would  really  be 


232      DISSOLUTIOX  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

incomplete  if  he  ceased  to  believe  that  the  breaking  of  a 
mirror  is  a  sign  that  someone  will  die?  Let  us  therefore  set 
about  finding  some  viodus  vivendi  with  superstition  ;  let  us 
combat  superstitions  which  are  harmful  not  by  exposing  their 
irrationality  but  by  substituting  in  their  stead  superstitions 
which  are  contrary  to  them  and  inoffensive.  Let  us  declare  that 
there  are  political  superstitions  and  instruct  women  and  chil- 
dren in  them ;  let  us  inoculate,  for  example,  feeble  minds 
with  that  ingenious  Mohammedan  aphorism,  that  the  duration  . 
of  one's  life  is  determined  in  advance  and  that  the  coward  gains 
absolutely  nothing  by  fleeing  from  the  field  of  battle  ;  if  he 
was  fated  to  die,  he  will  die  on  his  own  doorstep.  Does  not 
that  strike  one  as  a  useful  belief  for  an  army  to  hold  and  more 
inoffensive  than  a  great  many  religious  beliefs  ?  Perhaps  it 
even  contains  an  element  of  truth. 

One  might  go  far  along  that  path  and  discover  a  number  of 

necessary  or  at  least  useful  illusions,  a  number  of  "  indestruct- 

That  religions     ible "  beliefs.     "It  is,"  says   M.    Renan,  "more 

beliefs  have  been    difficult    to    hinder    mankind's  believing  than  to 

nseM  no  reason        .  .  ..       ^  •    1        •       •  t  1 

forretaining  mduce  it  to  believe.       Certainly  it  is.     In  other 

*^^°^'  words,    it    is    more    difificult    to    instruct  than  to 

deceive.  If  it  were  not  so,  what  merit  would  there  be  in  the 
communication  of  knowledge?  Knowledge  is  always  more 
complex  than  prejudice.  A  knowledge  sufificiently  complete 
to  put  one  on  one's  guard  against  lapses  of  judgment 
demands  years  of  patience.  Happily,  humanity  has  long^ 
centuries  before  it,  long  centuries  and  treasures  of  persever- 
ance ;  for  there  is  no  creature  more  persevering  than  man  and 
no  man  more  obstinate  than  the  savant.  But  it  may  be 
said  that  religious  myths,  being  better  adapted  than  pure 
knowledge  to  popular  intelligence,  possess  after  all  the 
advantage  of  symbolizing  a  portion  of  the  truth  ;  and  that  on 
this  score  one  may  permit  them  to  the  vulgar.  It  is  as  if  one 
should  say  that  the  "  vulgar"  should  be  permitted  to  believe 
that  the  sun  moves  round  the  earth  because  the  common 
man  is  incapable  of  conceiving,  with  accuracy,  the  infinite 
complexity  of  the  motion  of  the  stars.  But  every  theory,, 
every  attempted  explanation,  however  crude   it  may  be,  is  \\\ 


f 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AMONG  THE  PEOPLE.      233 

some  degree  a  symbol  of  the  trutli.  It  is  symbolic  of  the 
truth  to  say  that  nature  experiences  a  horror  of  a  vacuum,  that 
the  blood  lies  motionless  in  the  arteries,  that  the  line  of  vision 
runs  from  the  eye  to  the  object,  instead  of  from  the  object  to 
the  eye.  All  these  primitive  theories  are  incomplete  formula- 
tions of  the  reality,  more  or  less  popular  efforts  to  "  render  "  it ; 
they  rest  upon  visible  facts  not  yet  correctly  interpreted  by  a 
completer  scientific  knowledge  ;  and  does  that  constitute  a 
reason  for  respecting  all  these  symbols,  and  for  condemning 
the  popular  intelligence  to  fatten  upon  them?  Primitive  and 
mythical  explanations  served  in  the  past  to  build  up  the  truth  ; 
they  ought  not  nowadays  to  be  employed  to  obscure  it.  When 
a  scaffolding  has  served  its  purpose  in  aiding  one  to  erect  an 
edifice,  one  tears  it  down.  If  certain  tales  are  good  to  amuse 
children  with,  one  at  least  should  be  careful  that  they  are  not 
taken  too  seriously.  Let  us  not  take  outworn  dogmas  too 
seriously,  let  us  not  regard  them  with  excessive  complacency 
and  tenderness;  if  they  are  still  legitimately  objects  of  admi- 
ration to  us  when  we  reset  them  among  the  circumstances  to 
which  they  owed  their  birth,  they  cease  to  be  so  the  instant 
one  endeavours  to  perpetuate  them  among  the  circumstances 
of  modern  life  where  they  are  quite  out  of  place. 

Like  M.  Renan,  Mr.  Max  MuUer  almost  sees  an  example  to 

be  followed  in  the  castes  established  by  the   Hindus  among 

Preliminary  ac-   the  minds,  as  among  the  classes  of  the  people,  in 

quisition  of  false-    ^hg    regular  periods    or    asramas  through   which 

hood  not  necessary      ,  ...  ,        •     ,     n-  -it „^ 

to  recognition  of  they  oblige  the  Hitelligence  successively  to  pass, 
truth,  ii-,    j-j-je    hierarchy   of    religions   with    which  they 

burden  the  spirit  of  the  faithful.  For  them  traditional  error 
is  sacred  and  venerable  ;  it  serves  as  a  preparation  for  the 
truth  ;  one  must  place  a  bandage  on  the  eyes  of  the  neophyte 
in  order  to  be  able  to  take  it  off  again  afterward.  The  ten- 
dencies of  the  modern  mind  are  precisely  the  opposite  ;  it 
likes  to  supply  the  present  generation  at  once,  and  without 
superfluous  preliminary,  with  the  whole  body  of  truth 
acquired  by  the  generations  which  have  passed  away,  without 
false  respect  or  false  courtesy  for  the  errors  it  replaces ;  it  is 
not  enough  that  the  light  should  filter  into  the  mind  through 


334      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

some  secret  rift,  the  doors  and  windows  must  be  thrown  wide 
open.  Tlie  modern  mind  fails  to  see  in  what  respect  a  dehb- 
erate  effort  to  inculcate  absurdity  in  a  portion  of  the  com- 
nuiiiity  can  serve  to  secure  rectitude  of  judgment  in  the 
remaining  portions  ;  or  in  what  respect  it  is  necessary  to  build 
a  liousc  of  truth  upon  a  foundation  of  falsehood  ;  or  to  run 
down  the  part  of  the  hill  that  we  have  already  climbed,  as  a 
preparation  for  climbing  higher. 

I  f  the  religious  sentiment  should  disappear,  it  may  be  objected,. 

it  would  leave  a  void  which  it  would  be  impossible  to  fill,  and 

humanity's  horror  of  a  vacuum   is  even   greater 

Transfomatioii    than  nature's.    Humanity,  therefore, would  satisfy 

of  faith  mevitaole.  •'  '  '  _  ^ 

somehow  or  other,  even  with  absurdities,  that  eter- 
nal need  of  believing  of  which  we  have  spoken  above.  The 
instant  one  religion  is  destroyed  another  takes  its  place  ;  it  will 
be  always  so  from  age  to  age,  because  the  religious  sentiment, 
will  always  exist  as  a  continuing  need  for  some  object  of  wor-l 
ship  which  it  will  create  and  re-create  in  spite  of  all  the  ratio- 
cination in  the  world.  No  victory  over  nature  can  be  lasting; 
no  permanent  need  in  the  human  breast  can  be  long  silenced. 
There  are  periods  in  human  life  when  faith  is  as  imperious  as 
love  ;  one  experiences  a  hunger  to  embrace  something,  to  give 
one's  self — even  to  a  figment  of  the  imagination  ;  one  is  a  victim 
to  a  fever  of  faith.  Sometimes  this  mood  lasts  throughout  one's 
whole  life,  sometimes  it  lasts  some  days  only  or  some  hours; 
there  are  cases  in  which  it  does  not  present  itself  till  late,  and 
even  very  late,  in  life.  And  the  priest  has  taken  note  of  all 
these  vicissitudes ;  he  is  always  there,  patient,  waiting  tranquilly 
for  the  moment  when  the  symptoms  shall  appear,  and  the  sleep- 
ing sentiment  shall  awaken  and  become  masterful  ;  he  has  the 
Host  ready,  he  has  great  temples  reverberating  with  sacred 
prayers,  where  man  may  come  to  kneel,  and  breathe  in  the 
spirit  of  God,  and  arise  strengthened.  The  reply  is  that  it  is 
a  mistake  to  regard  all  humanity  as  typified  in  the  person  of 
the  recently  disabused  believer.  It  has  often  been  made  a 
subject  of  reproach  to  free-thinkers  that  they  endeavour  to 
destroy  without  replacing,  but  one  cannot  destroy  a  religion 
in  the  breasts  of  a  people.     At  some  certain  moment  in  its  his- 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AMONG  THE  PEOPLE.      235 

tory  it  falls  of  its  own  weight,  with  the  disappearance  of  the 
pretended  evidences   on   which   it   was   resting;    it   does   not, 
properly   speaking,   die  ;    it  ceases   simply — becomes   extinct. 
It  will  cease  definitely  when  it  shall  have  become  useless,  and  J 
there  is  no  obligation  to  replace  what  is  no  longer  necessary,  | 
Among  the  masses,  intelligence  is  never  far  in  advance   of  tra- 
dition ;  one  never  adopts  a  new  idea  until  one  has  by  degrees 
become  accustomed  to  it.     It  all  takes  place  without  violence, 
or  at    least    without    lasting  violence ;    the   crisis    passes,  the 
wound  closes  quickly,  and  leaves  no  trace  behind  ;  the  fore- 
head of  the  masses  bears  no  scar.     Progress  lies  in  wait  for  the 
moment  of  least  resistance,  of  least   pain.     Even   revolutions 
do  not  succeed  except  in  so  far  as  they  are   purely  beneficial, 
as  they  constitute  a  universally  advantageous  evolution.     For 
the  rest,  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  revolution,  or  a  cataclysm, 
properly   so  called,  in  human  belief.     Each  generation  adds  a 
doubt  to  those  which  existed   before  in  the  minds  of  their 
parents,  and  thus  faith  falls  away  bit  by  bit,  like  the  banks  of  a 
river  worn  by  the  stream  ;  the  sentiments  which  were  bound 
up  with  the  belief  go  with  it,  but  they  are  incessantly  replaced 
by  others,  a  new  wave  sweeps  forward  to  fill  the  void,  and  the 
human  soul  profits  by  its  losses  and  grows  larger,  like  the  bed 
of  a  river.     The  adaptation  of  a  people  to  its  environment  is 
a  beneficent  law.     It  has  often  been  said,  and  justly,  that  there 
is  food  for  the  soul  as  well  as   food   for  the  body ;  and  the 
analogy  may  be  pursued  by  remarking  that  it  is  difficult  to 
induce  a  people  to   change    its  national  diet.     For  centuries 
the    inhabitants    of    Brittany    have    lived    upon    imperfectly 
cooked  buckwheat  cakes,  as  they  live  by  their  simple  faith  and 
infantine  superstitions.     It  may.  however,  be  affirmed,  a  priori, 
that  the  day  will  come  when  the  reign  of  the  buckwheat  cake 
in   Brittany  will  be  at  an   end,  or  at  least  will   be  shared  by 
other,  and  better  prepared,  and  more  nourishing  foods;  it  is 
equally  rational  to  affirm  that  the   faith  of  Brittany  will  some 
day  come  to  an  end,  that  the  somewhat  feeble  minds  of  the 
inhabitants   will  sooner  or  later   seek  nourishment  in   solider 
ideas  and  beliefs,  and  that  the  whole  of  their  intellectual  life 
will,  by  degrees,  be  transformed  and  renewed. 


236      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

It  is  only  those  wlio  have   been  reared  in  a   faith,  and  then 
disabused  of  it,  that  preserve,  along  with  their  primitive  senti- 
ments, a  certain  home-sickness  for  a  belief  to  cor- 

The  disenchant-  . 

ment  that  accom-    respond  to  these  sentiments.      1  he  reason  is  that 
pamesit  they  have  been  violently  hastened  in  their  passat^e 

temporary,  "^  .  •'  r-  o 

from  belief  to  incredulity.  The  story  of  the  pass- 
ing disenchantment  with  life,  which  the  recent  disbeliever 
experiences,  has  often  been  told.  "  I  felt  horribly  exiled,'^ 
M.  Renan  once  said,  in  speaking  of  the  moral  crisis  through 
which  he  himself  had  passed.  "The  fish  in  Lake  Baikal  have 
taken  thousands  of  years,  it  is  said,  to  transform  themselves 
from  salt-water  to  fresh-water  fish.  I  had  to  achieve  my  own 
transformation  in  the  course  of  some  weeks.  Catholicism 
surrounds  the  whole  of  life  like  an  enchanted  circle  with  so 
much  magic  that,  when  one  is  deprived  of  it,  everything  seems 
insipid  and  melancholy  ;  the  universe  looked  to  me  like  a  desert. 
If  Christianity  was  not  true,  everything  else  seemed  to  me  to  be 
indifferent,  frivolous,  scarce  worthy  of  attention;  the  world 
looked  mediocre,  morally  impoverished  to  me.  The  world 
seemed  to  me  to  be  in  its  dotage  and  decadence  ;  I  felt  lost  in 
a  nation  of  pigmies."  This  pain  incident  to  metamorphosis, 
this  sort  of  despair  at  renouncing  everything  that  one  has 
believed  and  loved  up  to  that  time,  is  not  peculiar  to  the  Chris- 
tian who  has  fallen  away  from  Christianity  ;  it  exists  in  diverse 
degrees,  as  M.  Renan  well  knew,  whenever  a  love  of  any  sort 
comes  to  an  end  in  us.  For  him  who,  for  example,  has  placed 
his  whole  life  in  the  love  of  a  woman  and  feels  himself  betrayed 
by  her,  life  seems  not  less  disenchanted  than  for  the  believer 
who  sees  himself  abandoned  by  his  God.  Even  simple  intel- 
lectual errors  may  produce  an  analogous  sentiment.  Archi- 
medes no  doubt  would  have  felt  his  life  crumble  away  beneath 
him,  if  he  had  discovered  irremediable  lacunae  in  his  chain  of 
theorems.  The  more  intimately  a  god  has  been  personified 
and  humanized,  the  more  intimately  he  comes  to  be  beloved, 
and  the  greater  must  be  the  wound  he  leaves  behind  when  he 
deserts  the  heart.  But  even  though  this  wound  be  in  certain 
instances  incurable,  that  fact  constitutes  no  argument  in  sup- 
port of  the   religion   of   the   masses,  for    an    illegitimate   and 


RELIGIO:^  AND  NON-RELIGION  AMONG  THE  PEOPLE.      237 

unjustifiable  love  may  cause  as  much  suffering  when  one  is 
deprived  of  it  as  a  legitimate  love.  The  bitterness  of  truth, 
lies  less  in  truth  itself  than  in  the  resistance  offered  to  it  byl 
intrenched  and  established  error.  It  is  not  the  world  which' 
is  desert  when  deprived  of  the  god  of  our  dreams,  it  is  our 
own  heart ;  and  we  have  ourselves  to  blame  if  we  have  filled 
our  hearts  with  nothing  better  than  dreams.  For  the  rest,  in 
the  majority  of  cases,  the  void,  the  sense  of  loss  which  a 
religion  leaves  behind,  is  not  lasting  ;  one  adapts  one's  self  to 
one's  new  moral  environment,  one  becomes  happy  again  ;  no 
doubt  not  in  the  same  manner — one  is  never  happy  twice  in  the 
same  manner — but  in  a  manner  less  primitive,  less  infantine, 
more  stable.  M.  Renan  is  an  example  of  it.  His  transmuta- 
tion into  a  fresh-water  fish  was  achieved  in  reality  tranquilly 
enough  ;  it  is  doubtful  whether  he  ever  dreams  now  of  the  salt- 
water  stretches  of  the  Bible,  and  nobody  has  ever  declared  so 
forcibly  that  he  is  happy.  One  might  almost  make  it  a  matter 
of  reproach  to  him,  and  suggest  that  the  profoundest  happi- 
ness is  sometimes  not  so  precisely  aware  of  itself.  If  every 
absolute  faith  is  a  little  naive,  one  is  not  absolutely  without 
naivete  when  one  is  too  confident  of  one's  own  happiness. 

To  the  surprise  and  to  the  disenchantment  which  a  former 
Christian  experiences  in  the  presence  of  scientific  truth  may 

be  opposed  the  even  more  profound  astonishment 
cheapness  ofre-  which  thosc  who  have  been  exclusively  nourished 
ligious  specula-      q^  science  experience  in  the  presence  of  religious 

doema.  The  man  of  science  can  understand 
relieious  dog-mas,  for  he  can  follow  the  course  of  their  birth 
and  development  century  by  century  ;  but  he  experiences, 
in  his  effort  to  adapt  himself  to  this  narrow  environment, 
something  of  the  difficulty  that  he  might  feel  in  an  effort  to 
enter  a  Liliputian  fairy  palace.  The  world  of  religion— with 
the  ridiculous  importance  which  it  ascribes  to  the  earth  as  the 
centre  of  the  universe,  with  the  palpable  moral  errors  that  the 
Bible  contains,  with  its  whole  body  of  legend,  which  is  affect- 
ing only  to  those  who  believe  in  them,  with  its  superannuated 
rites — all  seems  so  poor,  so  powerless  to  symbolize  the  infinite, 
that  the  man  of  science  is  inclined  to  see  in  these  infantine 


238      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

dreams  the  repugnant  and  despicable  side  rather  than  the  ele- 
vated and  attractive  side.  Livingstone  says  that  one  day,  after 
having  preached  the  Gospel  to  a  new  tribe,  he  was  taking  a  walk 
in  the  neighbouring  fields  when  he  heard  near  him,  behind  a 
bush,  a  strange  noise  like  a  convulsive  cough  ;  he  there  found 
a  young  negro  who  had  been  taken  by  an  irresistible  desire  to 
laugh  by  the  account  of  the  Biblical  legends,  and  had  hidden 
himself  there  out  of  respect  for  Livingstone,  and  in  the 
shadow  of  the  bush  was  writhing  with  laughter  and  unable  t9 
rei)ly  to  the  questions  of  the  worthy  pastor.  Certainly  the 
surprising  legends  of  religion  can  give  rise  to  no  such  outburst 
of  gaiety  as  this  in  one  who  has  spent  his  life  among  the 
facts  of  science  and  the  reasoned  theories  of  philosophy.  He 
feels  rather  a  certain  bitterness,  such  as  one  feels  generally  in 
the  presence  of  human  feebleness,  for  man  feels  something  of 
the  same  solidarity  in  the  presence  of  human  error  as  in  the 
presence  of  human  suffering.  If  the  eighteenth  century 
ridiculed  superstition,  if  the  human  mind  was  then  "  dancing," 
as  Voltaire  said,  "  in  chains,"  it  is  the  distinction  of  our  epoch 
more  accurately  to  have  estimated  the  weight  of  those 
chains;  and  in  truth,  when  one  examines  coolly  the  poverty 
of  the  popular  attempts  that  have  been  made  to  represent  the 
world  and  the  ideal  of  mankind,  one  feels  less  inclination  to 
laugh  than  to  weep. 

But,  however  that  may  be,  the  evolution  of  human  belief 

must  not  be  judged  by  the  painful  revolutions  of  individual 

.    T     .   ,,  belief;    in    humanity    such    transformations    are 

InevitaDle  ex-  ■'  1       •  r 

tinction  of  fanat-  subject  to  regular  laws.  The  very  explosions  of 
^''^^™'  the  religious  sentiment,  explosions  even  of  fanat- 

icism, which  still  occur  and  have  so  often  occurred  in  the 
course  of  religious  degeneration,  enter  as  an  integral  part  into 
the  formula  of  the  very  process  of  degeneration  itself.  After 
having  been  so  long  one  of  the  most  ardent  interests  of 
humanity,  religious  faith  must,  of  necessity,  be  slow  in  cooling. 
Every  human  interest  resembles  those  stars  which  are 
gradually  declining  at  once  in  light  and  heat,  and  which 
from  time  to  time  present  a  solid  exterior  and  then,  as  the 
result  of    some  inner  disturbance,  burst    through  their  outer 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AMONG  THE  PEOPLE.      239 

rind  and  become  once  more  brilliant  to  a  degree  that  they 
had  not  rivalled  for  hundreds  of  centuries ;  but  this  very  bril- 
liancy is  itself  an  expenditure  of  light  and  heat,  a  phase  sim- 
ply of  the  process  of  cooling.  The  star  hardens  once  more  on 
its  surface,  and,  after  every  fresh  cataclysm  and  illumination,  it 
becomes  less  brilliant  and  dies  in  its  efforts  to  revive.  A  spec- 
tator who  should  be  watching  it  from  a  sufficient  height  might 
even  find  a  certain  comfort  in  the  triumphs  of  the  very  spirit 
of  fanaticism  and  reaction  which  result  in  a  prolonged  subse- 
quent cnfeeblement  and  a  more  rapid  approach  toward  final 
extinction.  Just  as  haste  is  sometimes  more  deliberate  than, 
deliberation,  so  a  violent  effort  to  reanimate  the  past  sometimes' 
results  in  hastening  its  death.  You  cannot  heat  a  cold  star 
from  the  outside. 

//.  Will  the  dissolution  of  religion  result  in  a  dissolution  of 
morality  among  the  people  ? 

The  general  enfeeblement  of  the  religious  instinct  will  set 
free,  for  employment  in  social  progress,  an  immense  amount 
of  force  hitherto  set  aside  for  the  service  of  mysticism  ;  but  it 
may  well  be  asked  also  whether  there  are  not  a  number  of 
forces  hurtful  to  society,  and  hitherto  held  in  check  or  annulled 
by  the  religious  instinct,  which  upon  its  disappearance  will  be 
given  free  play. 

"  Christianity,"  Guizot  said,  "  is  a  necessity  for  mankind  ;  it  is 

a  school  of  reverence."     No   doubt ;  but   less  so  perhaps  than 

Hindu  religions,  which  go  the   length  of   propos- 
One  must  respect    .  ,  ,,  ....  r  i-i-^  i. 

what  is  respect-      mg  the  absolute  division  of  mankind   into  castes 

able  only.  ^g  ^^  object  for  reverence  ;  however  contrary  it 

may  be  to  the  natural  sentiments  of  mankind  and  the 
operation  of  social  laws.  Assuredly  no  society  can  sub- 
sist if  its  members  neither  respect  nor  reverence  what  is 
respectable  and  venerable  ;  respect  is  decidedly  an  indispensa- 
ble element  in  national  life  ;  the  fact  is  one  which  we  too 
easily  forget  in  France  ;  but  society  is  barred  from  progress  if 
one  respects  what  is  not  respectable,  and  progress  is  a  condi 
tion  of  life  for  a  society.     Tell  me  what  you  respect,  and  I  will 


w 


240     DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

tell  you  what  you  are.  The  progress  of  human  reverence  for 
objects  ever  higher  and  more  high  is  symbolic  of  all  other 
kinds  of  progress  achieved  by  the  human  mind. 

But  for   religion,  say  the  Guizot   school,  the  property-ques-     f 
tion  would  sweep  away  the  masses  of  the  people  ;  it  is  the    , 

Christianity        Churcli  which  holds  them  in  check.     If  there  is 
qmte  the  opposite   ^  property-question,  let  us  not  seek  to  ignore  it; 

01  3,  C16I6UC6 

against  comma-  let  US  labour  sincerely  and  actively  at  its  solution. 
^'^™'  Qui  tro7npe-t-on  ici?     Is  God  simply  a  means  of- 

saving  the  capitalist  ?  More  than  that,  the  property-question 
is  not  one  which  is  more  intimately  bound  up  to-day  wiih 
religion  than  with  free-thought.  Christianity,  which  implic- 
itly contains  within  it  the  principles  of  communism,  is  itself 
responsible  for  spreading  ideas  among  the  people  which  have 
inevitably  germinated  in  the  course  of  the  great  intellectual 
germmation  which  distinguishes  the  present  epoch.  M.  de 
Laveleye.  one  of  the  d£ferLd£xs_Qlliberal  Christianity,  confesses  / 
as  much.      It  was  well  known  that  among  the  first  Christians 


all  property  was  neld  in  common,  and  that  communism  was 
the  immediate  consequence  of  baptism.'  "  We  hold  every-" 
\  thing  in  common  except  our  women,"  Tertullian  and  St. 
J  ustin  say  ;  "  we  share  everything."  ^  It  is  well  known  with  what 
vehemence  the  Fathers  of  the  Church  have  attacked  the  ri^ht 
of  private  property.  "  The  earth,"  says  St.  Ambrose,  "  was 
given  to  the  rich  and  poor  in  common.  Why,  oh,  ye  rich  ! 
should  ye  arrogate  to  yourselves  alone  the  ownership  of  it?" 
"  Nature  created  rights  in  common,  usurpation  has  created 
private  rights."  "  Wealth  is  always  the  product  of  robbery," 
says  St.  Jerome.  "  The  rich  man  is  a  robber,"  says  St.  Basil. 
"  Iniquity  is  the  basis  of  private  property,"  says  St.  Clement. 
"  The  rich  man  is  a  brigand,"  says  St.  Chrysoslom.  Bossuet 
himself  cries,  in  a  sermon  on  the  distribution  of  the  necessities 
of  life:  "The  murmurs  of  the  poor  are  just:  why  this  ine- 
quality of  condition  ?  "  And,  in  the  sermon  on  the  eminent 
dignity  of  the  poor:  "The  politics  of  Jesus  are  directly 
opposed  to  those  of  this  century."     And  finally  Pascal,  sum- 

'  Acts  ii.  44,  45  ;  iv.  32,  sqq. 

'  Tertull.  Apolog.  c.  39,  Justin.,   Apolog.  I,  14. 


RELIGION  AXD  NON-RELIGION  AMOXG  THE  PEOPLE.      241 

ming  up  in  an  illustration  all  the  socialistic  ideas  which  com- 
pose the  bulk  of  Christian  doctrine  :  "  '  That  dog  is  mine,' 
say  these  poor  children  ;  '  that  place  there  is  my  place  in  the 
sun.'  Behold  the  beginning  and  the  type  of  the  usurpation 
of  the  earth."  When  "  these  poor  children  "  are  men,  they  do 
not  always  view  the  usurpation  of  the  earth  with  resignation  ; 
from  the  Middle  Ages  down  they  have,  from  time  to  time, 
risen  in  revolt  and  there  have  been  resulting  massacres.  Men 
like  Pastoureaux  and  Jacques  in  France  and  Watt  Tyler  in 
England,  the  anabaptists  and  John  of  Leyden  in  Germany, 
are  examples  of  what  we  mean.  But,  these  great  explosions 
of  popular  clamour  once  at  an  end,  the  Christian  priest  had 
always  at  his  disposal,  to  subdue  the  crowd,  a  robust  doctrine 
of  compensation  in  heaven  for  one's  sufferings  on  earth  ;  all 
the  beatitudes  are  summed  up  in  "  Blessed  are  the  poor,  for 
they  shall  see  God."  In  our  days,  owing  to  the  progress  of 
the  natural  sciences,  anything  like  certitude  on  the  subject  of 
compensation  in  heaven  has  disappeared  ;  even  the  Christian, 
less  sure  of  Paradise,  aspires  to  see  the  justice  and  compensa- 
tions of  heaven  realized  in  this  world.  The  most  durable 
element  in  Christianity  is,  therefore,  less  the  check  that  it 
imposes  upon  the  masses  than  the  contempt  for  the  established'^ 
order  with  which  it  inspires  them.  Religion  is  nowadays 
obliged  to  call  in  social  science  to  aid  it  in  its  struggle  against 
socialism.  The  true  principle  of  private  property  as  of  social 
authority  cannot  be  religious  ;  it  lies  essentially  in  the  senti- 
ment of  the  rights  of  other  people  and  in  an  increasingly 
scientific  acquaintance  with  the  conditions  of  social  and 
political  life. 

But  is  not  religion  a  safeguard  of  popular  morality  ?     It   is^ 
true  that  immorality  and  crime    are   habitually  conceived   as 

T,  ,.  .       ,        associated  with  non-religion,  and  as  products  of  it. 
Religion  not  — '=' * r — 

necessary  to  Criminologists,  however,  have  demonstrated  that 

morality.  no  "pToposTtJon  "could    bc    less   tenable.     If   one 

considers  the  mass  of  the  delinquents  in  any  country,  one  will 
find  that  irreligion  among  them  is  an  exception,  and  a  rare 
exception.  In  unusually  religious  countries  like  England 
derinquenTs  are  not  less  numerous,  and  the  average  of  belief 


242      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

among  them  is  hi<^her;  the  greater  number,  Mayhew  says,  pro- 
fess to  believe  in  the  Bible.  In  France,  where  non-religion  is 
so  common,  it  is  natural  that  it  should  also  be  common  among 
the  criminal  classes,  but  it  is  far  from  being  the  rule  ;  it  is 
most  frequent  among  the  leaders,  the  organizers  of  crime, 
those,  in  effect,  who  rise  above  the  mass  of  their  fellows,  like 
Mandrin  in  the  last  century,  La  Pommerais,  Lacenaire.  If 
sociologists  find  themselves  obliged  to  attribute  a  positive 
antisocial  bias  to  certain  criminals,  it  is  not  surprising  that, 
they  should  recognize  in  a  number  of  them  an  amount  of 
instruction  and  a  degree  of  talent  amply  suf^cient  to  disem- 
barrass them  of  the  superstitious  beliefs  of  the  multitude, 
which  are  shared  by  their  companions  in  crime.  Neither  their 
talents  nor  their  culture  have  sufficed  absolutely  to  check 
their  evil  disposition,  but  certainly  they  have  not  been  respon- 
sible for  it.  Criminologists  cite  a  number  of  facts  which  go 
to  prove  that  the  most  minute  and  sincere  practice  of  religion 
may  go  along  with  the  greatest  crimes.  Despine  relates  that 
Bourse  had  scarcely  finished  a  robbery  and  a  homicide, 
before  he  went  to  kneel  and  take  part  in  a  church  service.  G., 
a  courtesan,  as  she  set  fire  to  her  lover's  house,  cried  :  "  God 
and  the  ever  blessed  Virgin  do  the  rest !  "  The  wife  of  Parency, 
while  her  husband  was  killing  an  old  man  as  a  preliminary  to 
robbery,  was  praying  God  for  her  husband's  success.  It  is  well 
known  how  religious  the  Marquise  of  Brinvilliers  was;  her 
very  condemnation  was  facilitated  by  the  fact  of  her  having 
written  with  her  own  hands  a  secret  confession  of  her  sins 
in  which  she  made  mention,  along  with  parricides,  fratricides, 
arsons,  and  poisonings  without  number,  of  the  list  of  the  num- 
ber of  times  that  she  had  been  remiss  or  negligent  in  con- 
fession.'    Religion  is  no  more  responsible  for  all  these  crimes 

'  It  must  not  be  believed  that  even  prostitutes,  who  as  a  class  are  so  closely 
allied  to  criminals,  are  wholly  non-religious.  A  case  is  cited  of  a  number  of 
prostitutes  who  subscribed  the  money  to  have  one  of  their  companions,  who  was  on 
the  point  of  death,  removed  from  a  house  of  ill-fame  to  some  place  where  the 
priest  might  visit  her  ;  others  subscribed  money  for  a  great  number  of  masses 
to  be  said  for  the  soul  of  a  companion  who  was  dead.  At  all  events  prostitutes  are 
quite  superstitious,  and  their  religion  swarms  with  strange  and  ridiculous  beliefs. 

In   Italy    criminals  are  usually  religious.     Quite  recently  the  Tozzi  family  of 


UNIA 


RELIGIOiV  AND  NON-RELIGION  AMONG 

than  non-religion  is;  the  higher  elements  of  both  are  equally 
debarred  of  entrance  into  the  brain  of  a  criminal.     Although 
the  nioral  sense  and  religious  sentiment  are  in  origin  distinct, 
they  act  and  react  incessantly  upon  each  other.     It  may  be 
announced,  as  a  law,  that  no  one  whose  moral  sense  is  obliter- 
ated can    be  capable  of  experiencing  genuine  religious  senti- 
ment in  all  its  purity,  though  such  a  person  may  well  be  more 
than   usually  apt  to  attach  a  value  to  the  superstitious  forms 
of  a  cult.      The  religious  sentiment,  at  its  height,  always  rests^ 
upon  a  refined  moral  sense,  although,  when  religious  sentiment.' 
goes  further  and  becomes  fanaticism,  it  may  react  on  and  debase' 
the  moral  sense.     On  a  person  who  is  deficient  in  moral  sense, 
religion  produces  no   effects  but  such  as   are  evil — fanaticism, 
formalism,  and  hypocrisy — because   it  is  of  necessity  ill-com- 
prehended and  misconstrued. 

Catholic  countries  often  supply  an  unusually  high  percent- 
age of  criminals,  because  Catholic  countries  are  more  ignorant 
than  Protestant  countries.  In  Italy,  for  example,  as  many  as 
sixteen  out  of  every  hundred  deaths  in  the  Papal  States  and 
Southern  Italy,  have  at  times  been  deaths  by  violence,  whereas 

butchers,  after  having  killed  and  dismembered  a  young  man,  sold  his  blood, 
mixed  with  sheep's  blood,  in  their  shop,  and  went  none  the  less  to  perform  their 
devotions  to  the  Madonna,  and  to  kiss  the  statue  of  the  Virgin.  The  Caruso  band, 
Lombroso  says,  habitually  placed  sacred  images  in  the  caves  and  w'oods  in 
which  they  lived,  and  burned  candles  before  them.  Verzeni,  who  strangled  three 
women,  was  an  assiduous  frequenter  of  the  church  and  the  confessional,  and  he 
came  of  a  family  which  was  not  only  religious  but  bigoted.  The  companions  of 
La  Gala,  who  were  imprisoned  at  Pisa,  obstinately  refused  to  take  food  on 
Friday  during  Lent,  and  when  the  keeper  tried  to  persuade  them  to  do  so,  they 
replied,  "Do  you  think  we  have  been  excommunicated?"  Masini,  with  his 
band,  met  three  countrymen  and  among  them  a  priest  ;  he  slowly  sawed  open  the 
throat  of  one  of  them  with  an  ill-sharpened  knife,  and  then,  with  his  hands  still 
bloody,  obliged  the  priest  to  give  him  the  consecrated  Host.  Giovani  Mio  and  Fon- 
tana  went  to  confession  before  going  out  to  commit  a  murder.  A  young  Neapolitan 
parricide,  covered  with  amulets,  confessed  to  Lombroso  that  he  had  invoked  the 
aid  of  the  Madonna  de  la  Chaine  in  the  accomplishment  of  his  horrible  crime. 
"  And  that  she  really  helped  me  I  conclude  from  this,  that  at  the  first  blow  of  the 
stick  my  father  fell  dead,  although  I  am  myself  personally  weak."  Another  mur- 
derer, a  woman,  before  killing  her  husband,  fell  on  her  knees  and  prayed  to  the 
blessed  Virgin  to  give  her  the  strength  to  accomplish  her  crime.  Still  another 
announced  his  acceptance  of  a  line  of  action  devised  by  his  companion  in  these 
words,  "  I  will  come,  and  I  will  do  that  with  which  God  has  inspired  thee." 


244      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

in    Liguria    and    Piedmont   only   two    or   three   out   of  every 

hundred  are  deaths  by  violence.     The  population  of  Paris  is 

not,  on  the  whole,  more  immoral  than  that  of  any 

Iraorance,  not        ^~-; : — f=: r- t—.  \      7^     r  ~    , . 

Catholicism,  re-  otjier  great  Europeaji  city,  although  it  is  dis- 
sponsible  for  tinctly  less TeTigT'ous ;  what  a  difTerence,  for  exam- 

ple, between  London  and  Paris  I  Tiic  churches, 
temples,  and  synagogues  in  Paris  would  not  hold  one-tenth  of 
the  population,  and,  as  they  are  half  empty  in  time  of  services, 
a  statistician  may  with  some  show  of  reason  conclude  that 
only  about  a  twentieth  of  the  population  fulfil  their  religious 
duties.  Whereas  Paris  contains  only  169  places  of  worship, 
London,  in  1882,  possessed  1231 — without  counting  the  reli- 
gious assemblies  which  regularly  gather  in  the  parks,  the 
public  squares,  and  even  under  the  railway  viaducts. 

But  should  not  the  crimes  of  the  Commune  and  those  of  the 
French  Revolution  be  set  down  to  non-religion  ?     One  might, 

,   with  more  show  of  truth,  render  religion  responsi- 
Non-religion  not  °  ^ 

responsible  for  ble  for  the  massacres  of  St.  Bartholomew  and  of 
French  Eevoiu-       j     Dragonnades,  for,  in  the  wars  of  the  Hugue- 

tion  and  the  Com-  &  '  '  o 

mune.  nots,  of  the  Vaudois,  of  the  Albigenses,  the  issue 

was  a  religious  issue,  whereas  in  the  case  of  the  Commune  the 
issue  was  wholly  a  social  one  ;  religion  was  only  very  indirectly 
involved  in  it.  The  analogy  for  the  Commune  is  to  be  found 
in  the  wars  concerning  the  agrarian  laws  of  ancient  Rome,  or  in 
contemporary  strikes  which  are  so  often  accompanied  by  blood- 
shed, or  in  any  of  the  brutal  uprisings  of  the  labourer  or  the 
peasant  against  the  capitalist  or  the  owner  of  the  soil.  Be  it 
remarked,  moreover,  that  in  all  these  and  the  like  contests  the 
stronger  party — the  representative  of  society  and,  it  is  alleged, 
of  religion — commits,  in  the  name  of  repression,  violences  com- 
parable to  and  sometimes  less  excusable  than  those  with  which 
they  charge  the  party  of  disorder. 

What  demoralizes  races  and  peoples  is  not  so  much  the 
downfall  of  religion  as  the  luxury  and  idleness  of  the  few  and 
jthe  discontented  poverty  of  the  many.  In  society  demor- 
alization begins  at  the  two  extremes,  top  and  bottom.  The 
law  of  labour  is  open  to  two  species  of  revolt  ;  the  revolt  of  the 
discontented  working  man  who  curses  the  law  of  labour  even 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AMONG  THE  PEOPLE.      245 

while  he  obeys  it,  and  the  revolt  of  the  idle  noble,  or  man  of 
fortune,  who  ignores  it  simply.  The  richest  classes  in  soi  irty 
are  often  those  whose  lives  show  a  minimum  _of_ 
laWssake.  devotioii^f  disintercslcdness^of  true  moral  (JLva- 
tion.  For  a  fashionable  woman,  for  example,  the 
duties  of  life  too  frequently  consist' iiTan  uiittroken  round  of 
trifles  ;  she  is  utterly  ignorant  of  what  it  means  to  take  pains. 
To  bear  a  child  or  two  (to  exceed  the  number  of  three,  one  of 
them  has  said,  is  the  height  of  immorality),  to  have  a  nurse  to 
take  care  of  them,  to  be  faithful  to  one's  husband,  at  least  within 
the  limits  of  coquetry — behold  the  whole  duty  of  woman!  Too 
frequently,  in  the  upper  classes,  duty  comes  to  be  conceived 
simply  as  a  matter  of  abstinence,  of  not  being  as  nasty  or  as 
wicked  as  one  might.  Temptations  to  do  evil  increase  in 
number  as  one  mounts  in  the  social  scale,  whereas  what  one 
may  call  temptations  to  do  good  decrease  in  number. 
/Fortune  enables  one  to  hire  a  substitute,  so  to  speak,  in  all 
[the  duties  of  life— in  caring  for  the  sick,  in  nursing  children, 
in  rearing  them,  and  so  forth  ;  the  rich  are  not  obliged  t©  pay, 
as  the  saying  is,  with  their  person— /^j^r  de  la  personne  ! 
Wealth  too  often  produces  a  species  of  personal  avarice,  of 
miserliness  of  one's  self,  a  restriction  of  moral  and  physical 
activity,  an  impoverishment  of  the  individual  and  of  the  race. 
The  shopkeeping  class  constitute  the  least  immoral  section 
of  the  rich,  and  that  because  they  preserve  their  habits  of 
work  ;  but  they  are  constantly  affected  by  the  example  of  the 
higher  classes,  who  take  a  pride  in  being  useless.  The  remnant 
of  morality,  which  exists  among  the  middle  class,  is  partly  due 
to  the  love  of  money ;  money  does,  in  effect,  possess  one 
advantage,  that  it  must  in  general  be  worked  for.  Nobles  and 
business  men  love  money  but  in  different  ways.  Young  men 
of  good  family  love  it  as  a  means  of  expense  and  of  prodigality, 
people  in  a  small  way  of  business  love  it  for  its  own  sake,  and 
out  of  avarice.  Avarice  is  a  powerful  safeguard  for  the 
remnants  of  morality  in  a  people.  It  coincides,  in  almost  all 
its  results,  with  a  disinterested  love  of  labour;  it  exercises  no 
evil  influence  except  in  the  matter  of  marriage,  where  the 
question  of  the  girl's  portion  becomes  paramount,  and  in  the 


246      DISSOLUTION  OF  liELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

matter  of  children,  of  which  it  tends  to  restrict  the  number. 
All  things  considered,  as  between  prodigality  and  avarice,  the 
moralist  is  obliged  to  cast  his  vote  for  the  latter  on  the  ground 
that  it  is  not  favourable  to  debauchery,  and  does  not  therefore 
tend  to  dissolve  society ;  both  are  maladies  which  benumb 
and  may  destroy  one,  but  the  former  is  contagious  and  is 
transmitted  by  contact.  We  may  add  that  love  of  expense 
rarely  serves  to  encourage  regular  labour:  it  produces,  rather, 
an  appetite  for  gambling  and  even  for  robbery ;  clever  strokes 
on  the  stock-exchange  amount,  in  certain  cases,  to  robbery 
pure  and  simple.  Thence  arises  a  secondary  demoralizing 
influence.  Prodigals  are  necessarily  attracted  to  the  more  or 
less  shaky  forms  of  financial  speculation,  by  which,  absolutely 
without  labour  properly  so  called,  more  money  can  be  amassed 
than  by  labour;  the  miser,  on  the  contrary,  will  hesitate,  will 
prefer  effort  to  risk,  and  his  effort  \\\\\  be  more  beneficial  to 
society.  In  effect,  the  only  thing  that  can  maintain  society  in 
a  healthy  state  is  that  love  of  labour  for  its  own  sake  which  is 
so  rarely  met  with,  and  which  one  must  endeavour  to  develop  ; 
but  this  love  of  intellectual  and  physical  labour  is  in  nowise 
bound  up  with  religion  ;  it  is  bound  up  with  a  certain  broad 
culture  of  the  mind  and  heart  which  render  idleness  insup- 
portable. 

Similarly  with  the  other  moral  and  social  virtues  which  are 

alleged  to  be  inseparable  from  religion.     In  all  times  humanity 

^  ,.  .    ^,  has  found  a  certain  average  of  vice,  as  of  virtue. 

Religion  the  °  '  ' 

creature  of  cir-       necessary.       Religions   themselves    have    always 

cumstance,  been  obliged  to   give  way  before  certain  preva- 

lent habits  and  passions.  If  we  had  been  living  at  the  time  of 
the  Reformation,  we  should  have  heard  Catholic  priests  main- 
taining, with  all  the  seriousness  in  the  world,  that,  but  for 
Catholic  dogmas  and  the  authority  of  the  Pope,  society  would 
dissolve  and  perish.  Happily  experience  has  proved  that 
these  dogmas  and  that  authority  are  not  indispensable  to  social 
life  ;  the  conscience  of  mankind  has  attained  its  majority  and  no 
longer  needs  the  services  of  a  guardian.  The  day  will  come, 
no  doubt,  when  Frenchmen  will  no  more  feel  an  inclination 
to  enter  into  a  house  of  stone  and  invoke  God  to  the  sound  of 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AMONG  THE  PEOPLE.      247 

a  hymn  than  an   EngHsliman  or  a  German  experiences  to-day 
an  inclination  to  kneel  before  a  priest  and  confess  to  him. 

///.    Is   Protestantism   a  necessary  traiisition  stage  between 
religion  and  free-thought  ? 

Over  and  above  free-thinkers,  properly  so  called,  there  exists 

in  every  country  a  class  of  men  who  understand  perfectly  the 

defects  in  the  relijrions  in  force  about  them,  but 

Dependence  01  ° 

Catholicism  on       have   not    the   power    of   mind    necessary  to   lift 
P°'^""  them  above  revealed  dogma  generally,  and  every 

form  of  external  cult  and  rite.  They  begin  accordingly  to 
dabble  in  the  religions  of  neighbouring  peoples.  A  religion 
which  is  not  in  force  in  one's  immediate  neighbourhood 
always  possesses  the  advantage  of  being  seen  from  a  distance. 
At  a  distance  its  faults  are  scarcely  distinguishable,  and  the 
imagination  freely  endows  it  with  all  excellent  qualities. 
How  many  things  and  persons  gain  thus  by  aloofness  !  When 
one  has  seen  one's  ideal,  it  is  sometimes  good  not  to  approach 
it  too  near  if  one  is  to  preserve  one's  reverence  for  it.  A  num- 
ber of  Englishmen,  indignant  at  the  aridity  of  the  hard  and 
blind  fanaticism  of  the  extreme  Protestants,  cast  envious 
glances  across  the  Channel,  where  a  religion  seems  to  reign  that 
is  more  friendly  to  art, — at  once  more  aesthetic  and  more 
mystical,  capable  of  affording  a  completer  satisfaction  to  cer- 
tain human  needs.  Among  those  who  are  thus  favourable  to 
a  properly  understood  Catholicism  may  be  cited  Matthew 
Arnold  and  Cardinal  Newman  ;  and  one  might  even  add  the 
Queen  of  England  herself.  In  France,  as  might  be  expected, 
quite  the  opposite  disposition  obtains.  Wearied  of  the 
Catholic  Church  and  of  its  intolerance,  we  should  gladly 
escape  its  dominion  :  compared  with  the  objections  against 
Catholicism  which  assail  our  eyes,  the  objections  against 
Protestantism  appear  to  us  as  trifling.  And  the  same  notion 
has  occurred  simultaneously  to  a  number  of  distinguished 
Frenchmen  :  why  should  France  remain  Catholic,  at  least  in 
name  ?  Why  should  not  France  adopt  the  religion  of  the 
more  robust  people  who  have  recently  vanquished  her ;  the 


248     DISSOL UTION  OF  KELIGIOJVS  AV  EXISTLVG  SOCIE TIES. 

religion  of  Germany,  of   England,  of  the  United  States,  of  all 
the  young,  strong,  and  active  nations  ?     Why  not  begin  again 
the  labour  interrupted  by  the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew  and 
the   Edict  of   Nantes  ?     Even   if  one   should   not  succeed   in 
converting  the  masses,  it  would   suf^ce,  according  to  the  par- 
tisans of  Protestantism,  to  propagate  the  new  religion  among 
the  elite  of  the  population  very  sensibly  to  modify  the  general 
course  of  our  government,  of  our  national  spirit,  even  of  our 
laws.     The  laws  regulating  the  relations  of  Church  and  State    . 
would  promptly  be  corrected  ;  they  would  be  reconstructed  so 
as  to  offer  protection  to  the  development  of  the  Protestant 
religion,  as  they  at  this  moment  do  in  a  thousand  ways  to  the 
outworn   religion    of  Catholicism.     Ultimately   Protestantism 
would  be  declared  to  be  the  national  religion  of  France ;  the 
religion,  in  other  words,  toward  which  she  ought  to  endeavour 
to  move,  and  which  constitutes  her  real  ideal,  her  sole  hope  of 
the   future,  the   sole  means  open   to  Latin  nations  to  escape 
death,  and  to  outlive,  in  some  sense,  themselves.     Add  that,  in 
the  judgment  of  the  authors  of  this  hypothesis,  the  Protestant 
religion,  once   fairly  entered  in  the  lists  against  Catholicism, 
must  inevitably  and  speedily  win  the  day  ;  the  iron  pot  would 
make  short  work  of  the  earthen  pot.     The  partisans  of  Protes- 
tantism  invoke  history  in  support  of  their  conclusions;  Prot- 
estantism   was   vanquished   among    us    by   force,  and    not    by 
persuasion  ;  its  defeat  is  therefore  not  definitive.     Wherever 
Catholicism  has  not  employed  violence,  persecution,  and  crime 
to  maintain   itself,  it  has  always  succumbed;  its  only  tenable 
argument  has  been  to  put  its  opponents  to  death  ;  to-day  this 
comfortable  method  of  backing  the  syllogism  by  the  sword  is 
out  of  date,  and  Catholicism  is  condemned  the  instant  it  is 
attacked.     It  contains,  moreover,  an  essential  and  irremediable 
vice,  auricular  confession.     By  the  confessional  it  excites  the 
open  or  secret  hostility  of  every  husband   and  every  father, 
who   sees   the   priest   interposing   between   him  and  his  wife, 
between   him    and   his    children.     The    confessor   is    a   super- 
numerary in  every  family  ;  a  member  who  has  neither  the  same 
interests  nor  the  same  ideas,  and  who,  nevertheless,  is  perfectly 
informed   of  everything  the  other  members  do,  and  can,  in  a 


RELIGIO.V  AXD  NOX-RELIGIOX  AMOXG  THE  PEOPLE.      249 

thousand  ways,  oppose  their  projects,  and,  at  the  moment 
when  they  least  expect  it,  bar  their  path.  When  one  takes 
into  consideration  the  mute  state  of  war  which  so  often  exists 
between  the  married  man  and  the  CathoHc  priest ;  when  one 
analyzes  the  other  causes  of  dissolution  which  are  working  in 
Catholicism  ;  when  one  considers,  for  example,  that  the  dogma 
of  infallibility  is  simply  inacceptable  to  anyone  whose  con- 
science is  not  absolutely  distorted,  one  must  admit  that  the 
project  of  Protestantizing  France,  how  strange  soever  it  may 
seem  at  first  glance,  is  worthy  of  serious  attention. 

It  is  not  astonishing  that  it  should  have  won  to  its  side  a 
number  of  partisans,  and  should  have  provoked  a  certain  intel- 
lectual fermentation.     Michelet  and  Ouinet  were 

Proposal  to  "^ 

Protestantize  desirous  that  France  should  become  Protestant,  at 
France.  least  transitorily!     In    1843,  during  a  journey  to 

Geneva,  Michelet  discussed  with  some  clergymen  the  means 
of  accelerating  the  progress  of  Protestantism  in  France  and  of 
creating  a  really  national  church.  Two  men,  whose  names  are 
known  to  all  those  who  have  laboured  in  philosophy  or  in 
social  science,  MM.  Renouvier  and  De  Laveleye,  are  among 
the  promoters  of  this  movement.  Convinced  free-thinkers, 
like  M.  Louis  Menard,  acquiesce  in  it,  making  use  of  the  names 
of  Turgot  and  Quinet ;  and  ]\I.  Pillon  also  has  sustained  the 
project.  Many  Protestant  ministers  have  turned  the  whole  of 
their  activity  in  this  channel,  have  founded  journals  and  written 
for  the  reviews  ;  pamphlets,  works  often  remarkable  in  their 
kind,  have  been  composed  and  circulated.  Protestants  are 
more  disposed  than  Catholics  to  propagandism,  because  their 
faith  is  more  personal.  They  feel  that  in  a  number  of  provinces 
they  form  an  important  nucleus  which  may  grow  in  time 
like  a  snowball.  A  number  of  villages,  of  Yonne,  la  Marne, 
I'Aude,  etc.,  have  already  been  converted  ;  in  spite  of  all  the 
obstacles  raised  by  the  civil  and  religious  authorities,  in  spite 
of  vexations  and  annoyances  of  every  sort,  the  neophytes  have 
finally  succeeded  in  establishing  a  Protestant  pastor  among 
them.  Materially  considered,  these  results  are  small ;  their  con- 
sequences, however,  may  some  day  be  of  great  importance. 
One  never  suspects  how  many  people  there  are  ready  to  listen 


250      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

and  to  believe  ;  how  many  people  there  are  ready  to  preach 
aiul  to  convert.  It  need  not  be  a  matter  of  surprise,  some  day 
or  other,  to  see  Protestant  clergymen  fairly  rise  out  of  the  soil 
and  overrun  our  country  districts.  The  Catholic  clergy,  who 
present  an  almost  unbroken  front  of  incapacity,  will  scarcely 
be  able  to  hold  their  own  against  a  new  and  ardent  adversary. 
The  most  serious  opposition  to  Protestantism  in  France  is 
not  to  be  looked  for  from  the  Catholics,  but  from  the  free- 
thinkers.    It  is  in  the  name  of  free-thought  that. 

Contrary  to  the  .  _  ° 

tendency  of  we  shall  Consider  the  following  question  :    Ought 

renc  istory.  France  really  to  accept  as  its  ideal  any  religion 
whatsoever,  even  though  it  be  superior  to  the  one  professedly 
in  possession  at  the  present  day?  Is  not  the  acceptance  of 
any  religion  as  an  ideal  precisely  contrary  to  the  whole  move- 
ment of  the  French  mind  since  the  Revolution  ? 

It  has  been  said  that,  if  the  French  Revolution  was  put  down 
before  it  had  produced  all  of  the  results  which  were  expected 

T,      V  -D     1      of  it,  the  reason  was  that  it  was  undertaken,  not 
French  Revom-  '  _  ' 

tion  still  being  in  the  name  of  a  liberal  religion,  but  in  antago- 
accompis  e  .  nism  to  all  religion.  The  nation  rose  as  a  body 
against  Catholicism,  but  it  had  nothing  to  offer  in  its  stead; 
it  was  an  effort  in  the  void  and  resulted  necessarily  in  a  fall. 
To  address  such  a  reproach  to  the  Revolution,  is  precisely  to 
fail  to  recognize  its  distinguishing  peculiarity.  Theretofore 
religion  had  usually  been  involved  in  the  political  discussions  of 
men  ;  the  English  Revolution,  for  example,  was  in  part  religious. 
And  when  an  uprising  was,  as  it  happened,  wholly  religious, 
its  purpose  was  to  pulldown  one  cult  and  set  up  another;  the 
aid  of  a  new  God  had  to  be  called  in  to  expel  the  old  ;  but 
for  Jesus  or  some  other  unknown  divinity,  Jupiter  would  still 
have  been  enthroned  on  Olympus.  Also  the  result  of  these 
religious  revolutions  was  easy  to  predict  ;  at  the  end  of  a  cer- 
tain number  of  years  some  new  cult  was  bound  to  carry  the 
day,  to  intrench  itself,  and  to  become  quite  as  intolerant  as  its 
predecessor;  and  the  revolution  was  achieved — that  is  to  say, 
everything  was  practically  in  the  same  state  that  it  was  before. 
A  determinate  end,  close  at  hand,  had  been  pursued  and 
attained  ;    a  little   chapter  in   the  history  of  the  universe  had 


^ 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AMONG  THE  PEOPLE.      251 

been  written,  and  one  was  ready  to  close  it  with  a  period  and 
to  say  that  was  all.  Wiiat  drives  the  historian  to  despair  in 
the  case  of  the  French  Revolution,  is  precisely  the  impossibility 
of  writing  a  peroration,  of  reaching  a  final  stop,  of  saying, 
■"  That  is  all."  The  great  fermentation  persists,  and  passes  on 
from  generation  to  generation.  "The  French  Revolution  has 
come  to  nothing,"  it  is  said  ;  but  the  reason  is  perhaps  simply 
that  it  has  not  miscarried.  The  French  Revolution  is  still  in 
its  earliest  stages  ;  if  we  are  still  unable  to  say  where  it  is  lead- 
ing us,  we  may  at  least  afifirm  with  confidence  that  it  is  leading 
us  somewhere.  It  is  precisely  the  incertitude  and  the  remote- 
ness of  their  aim  that  constitute  the  nobility  of  certain  enter- 
prises ;  if  one  wants  something  very  big,  one  must  be  resigned 
to  want  something  a  little  vague.  One  must  be  resigned  also 
to  a  settled  discontent  with  everything  that  is  offered  one  as  a 
substitute  for  the  fleeing  ideal  that  constitutes  one's  aim. 
Never  to  be  satisfied — behold  a  comparatively  unknown  state 
of  mind  in  many  parts  of  the  world  !  Some  thousands  of  years 
ago  there  were  a  number  of  revolutions  in  China,  which  brought 
forth  results  so  precise  and  so  incontestable  that  they  have 
come  down  in  a  state  of  absolute  preservation  to  the  present  day. 
Is  China  the  ideal  of  those  who  wish  a  people  to  achieve  once 
for  all  a  state  of  satisfaction,  of  stable  equilibrium,  of  estab- 
lished environment,  of  unalterable  outline  and  form?  Certainly 
the  bent  of  the  French  mind  is  precisely  the  opposite  of  that  of 
the  Chinese.  Horror  of  routine,  of  tradition,  of  the  established 
fact  in  the  face  of  reason,  is  an  attribute  that  we  possess  to  a 
fault.  To  carry  reason  into  politics,  into  law,  into  religion 
was  precisely  the  aim  of  the  French  Revolution.  It  is  no 
easy  thing,  it  is  even  futile,  to  attempt  to  introduce  simultane- 
ously logic  and  light  into  everything;  one  makes  mistakes, 
one  reasons  ill,  one  has  one's  days  of  weakness,  one  succumbs 
to  concordats  and  empires.  In  spite,  however,  of  so  many 
temporary  divergences  from  the  straight  path,  it  is  already 
easy  to  recognize  the  direction  toward  which  the  Revolution 
tends,  and  to  affirm  that  this  direction  is  not  religious.  The 
French  Revolution  affords  an  example,  for  the  first  time  in  the 
world,  of  a  liberal  movement  disassociated  from  religion.     To 


252      DISSOLUTION^  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

wish,  with  Ouinct,  that  the  Revolution  should  become  Protestant 
is  simply  not  to  understand  it.  Republican  in  the  sphere  of 
politics,  the  Revolution  tends  to  enfranchise  man,  in  the  sphere 
of  thought  also,  from  every  species  of  religious  domination, 
and  of  uniform  and  irrational  dogmatic  belief.  The  Revolu- 
tion did  not  achieve  this  end  at  the  first  attempt;  it  was  guilty 
even  of  imitating  the  intolerance  of  the  Catholics  ;  therein  lay 
its  prime  fault,  its  great  crime  ;  we  suffer  from  it  still.  But 
the  remedy  does  not  consist  in  adopting  a  new  religion,  which, 
would  simply  be  a  disguised  return  to  the  past. 

Let  us  examine,  however,  the  substantial  apology  for  Prot- 
estantism, presented  by  M.  de  Laveleye.     He  maintains  the 

superiority  of  Protestantism  principally  in  regard 
PrttttaSr'     to  three  points  :   i.   It  is  favourable  to  education  ;1 

2.  It  is  favourable  to  political  and  religious 
liberty;  3.  It  does  not  possess  a  celibate  clergy  living  out- 
side of  the  family,  and  even  outside  of  the  country.  Let  us 
pass  these  different  points  in  review.  In  Protestantism  the 
need  of  instruction,  and  therefore  of  a  knowledge  of  how  to 
read,  is  inevitable,  for  the  reason  that,  as  has  been  often 
remarked,  the  reformed  religion  is  founded  on  the  interpreta- 
tion of  a  book,  the  Bible.  The  Catholic  religion,  on  the  con- 
trary, rests  upon  the  sacraments  and  certain  practices,  such  as 
the  confession,  and  the  Mass,  which  presuppose  no  knowl- 
edge of  reading.  Luther's  first  and  last  word  was,  "  God  com- 
mands you  to  educate  your  children."  In  the  eyes  of  the 
Catholic  priest  an  ability  to  read  is  not,  so  far  as  religion  is 
concerned,  an  unqualified  advantage,  it  exposes  the  possessor 
to  certain  dangers,  it  is  a  path  that  may  lead  to  heresy.  The 
organization  of  popular  instruction  dates  from  the  Reforma- 
tion. The  consequence  is  that  Protestant  countries  are  far 
in  advance  of  Catholic  countries  in  the  matter  of  popular 
instruction."     Wherever  popular  instruction  attains  its  height, 

'  In  Saxony,  Denmark,  Sweden,  Prussia,  Scotland  (not  England),  illiteracy  is  at 
a  minimum.  Even  in  the  most  favoured  Catholic  countries,  such  as  France  and 
Belgium,  at  least  a  third  of  the  population  are  illiterate.  In  this  comparison  race 
goes  for  nothing  ;  Switzerland  proves  as  much  ;  purely  Latin  but  also  Protestant 
cantons  Neuchatcl,  Vaux,  and  Geneva  are  on  a  level  with  the  Germanic  cantons  of 
Zurich  and  Bern,  and  are  superior  to  such  as  Tessin,  Valais,  and  Lucerne. 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AMONG  THE  PEOPLE.      253 

labour  will  be  directed  with  more  intelligence,  and  the 
economic  situation  will  be  better ;  Protestantism  therefore 
gives  rise  to  a  superiority  not  only  in  instruction,  but  in  com- 
merce and  industry,  in  order  and  in  cleanliness.' 

Similarly  in  civil    and    political    matters,    Protestants    have 

always  been  partisans  of  self-government,  of  liberty,  of  local 

autonomy,  and  of  decentralization.     Side  by  side 

X  rotcstftiitisni 

favours self-gov-  with  the  advance  of  the  Reformation  in  Switzer- 
ernment,  ^^^^^^  j^^  Holland,  in  England  and  America  there 

went  a  dissemination  of  the  principles  of  liberty  which  later 
became  the  articles  of  faith  of  the  French  Revolution.  Cal- 
vinists,  notably,  have  always  been  inclined  to  an  ideal  of 
liberty  and  equality  which  has  rightfully  rendered  them 
objects  of  suspicion  to  the  French  monarchy  ;  they  realized 

'  In  Switzerland  the  cantons  of  Neuchatel,  Vaux,  and  Geneva  are  strikingly  in 
advance  of  Lucerne,  Valais,  and  the  forest  cantons  ;  they  are  not  only  superior  in 
matters  of  education,  but  in  matters  of  industry,  of  commerce,  and  of  wealth  ;  and 
their  artistic  and  literary  activity  is  greater.  "  In  the  United  States,"  says  De 
Tocqueville,  "  the  majority  of  the  Catholics  are  poor."  In  Canada  the  larger  order 
of  business  interests,  manufacturing,  commerce,  the  principal  shops  in  the  cities, 
are  in  the  hands  of  Protestants.  M.  Audiganne,  in  his  studies  on  the  labouring 
population  in  France,  remarks  on  the  superiority  of  the  Protestants  in  respect 
to  industry,  and  his  testimony  is  the  less  suspicious  because  he  does  not  attribute 
that  superiority  to  Protestantism.  "  The  majority  of  the  labourers  in  Nimes,  notably 
the  silk-v.-eavers,  are  Catholics,  while  the  captains  of  industry  and  of  commerce, 
the  capitalists  in  a  word,  belong  to  the  Reformed  religion."  "  When  a  family  has 
split  into  two  branches,  one  of  which  has  clung  to  the  faith  of  its  fathers,  while  the 
other  has  become  Protestant,  one  almost  always  remarks  in  the  former  a  progressive 
financial  embarassment,  and  in  the  other  an  increasing  wealth."  "  At  Mazamet,  the 
Elbceuf  of  the  south  of  France,  all  the  captains  of  industry  with  one  exception  are 
Protestants,  while  the  great  majority  of  the  labourers  are  Catholics.  And  Catholic 
working  men  are,  as  a  class,  much  less  well  educated  than  Protestant  working  men." 
Before  the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes  members  of  the  Reformed  church  had 
taken  the  lead  in  all  branches  of  labour,  and  the  Catholics,  who  found  themselves 
unable  to  maintain  a  competition  with  them,  had  the  practice  of  a  number  of  different 
industries  in  which  the  latter  excelled  forbidden  them  by  a  series  of  edicts  beginning 
with  the  year  1662.  After  their  expulsion  from  France  the  Huguenots  carried  into 
England,  into  Prussia,  into  Holland,  their  spirit  of  enterprise  and  of  economy  ;  and 
enriched  the  districts  in  which  they  settled.  The  Germans  owe  some  portion 
of  their  progress  to  Huguenot  exiles.  Refugees  from  the  Revocation  introduced 
different  industries  into  England,  among  others  the  silk  industry  ;  and  it  was 
certain  disciples  of  Calvin  who  civilized  Scotland.  (See  M.  de  Laveleye  De 
I'avenir  des peuples  catholiques.) 


254      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

this  ideal  only  beyond  the  seas  in  the  American  Constitution, 
which  may  be  regarded,  in  some  sort,  as  the  product  of  Cal- 
vinistic  ideas.  As  early  as  the  year  1633  an  American,  Roger 
Williams,  proclaimed  universal  liberty,  and  liberty  of  con- 
science in  particular ;  he  proclaimed  the  complete  equality  of 
all  modes  of  religious  worship  before  the  law,  and  on  these 
principles  founded  the  democracy  of  Rhode  Island  and  the 
town  of  Providence.  The  United  States,  with  the  local  auton- 
omy and  decentralization  whicli  characterize  its  government, 
still  forms  the  type  of  the  Protestant  state.  In  such  a  state 
the  widest  liberty  exists  only,  to  say  the  truth,  within  the 
limit  of  Christianity:  the  founders  of  the  American  Constitu- 
tion scarcely  foresaw  the  day  when  a  wider  tolerance  would 
be  necessary.  And  it  would  be  to  form  an  extremely  false 
idea  of  the  United  States  to  imagine  that  the  civil  power  and 
religion  are  wholly  disassociated.  The  separation  between 
Church  and  state  is  far  from  being  as  absolute  in  America  as 
is  often  supposed,  and  M.  Goblet  d'Alviella  very  justly  corrects 
the  too  enthusiastic  assertions,  on  this  point,  of  M.  Guizot  and 
M.  de  Laveleye.' 

'  "  Public  institutions  are  still  deeply  impregnated  with  Christianity.  Congress, 
the  State  legislatures,  the  navy,  the  army,  the  prisons,  are  all  supplied  with  chap- 
lains ;  the  Bible  is  still  read  in  a  large  number  of  schools.  The  invocation  of  God 
is  generally  obligatory  in  an  oath  in  a  court  of  law,  and  even  in  an  oath  of  office. 
In  Pennsylvania  the  Constitution  requires  that  every  public  employee  shall  believe  in 
God,  and  in  a  future  state  of  reward  and  punishments.  The  Constitution  of  Mary- 
land awards  liberty  of  conscience  to  deists  only.  The  laws  against  blasphemy  have 
never  been  formally  abrogated.  In  certain  States,  more  or  less  stringent  Sunday 
laws  are  enforced.  In  1880  a  court  declined  to  recognize,  even  as  a  moral  obliga- 
tion, a  debt  contracted  on  Sunday,  and  a  traveller,  injured  in  a  railway  accident, 
was  refused  damages  on  the  ground  that  he  was  travelling  on  the  Lord's  Day.  And, 
finally,  church  property  and  funds  are  in  a  considerable  degree  exempt  from  taxa- 
tion."    (M.  Goblet  d'Alviella,  Evolution  religieuse,  p.  233.) 

Similarly,  in  Switzerland,  in  the  month  of  February,  1 886,  the  criminal  court  of 
Claris,  the  chief  place  in  a  canton  of  7000  inhabitants,  at  130  kilometers  from  Bern, 
rendered  a  singular  judgment,  A  mason  named  Jacques  Schiesser,  who  was  obliged 
to  work  in  water  of  an  excessively  low  temperature,  shivering  with  cold,  his  hands 
blue,  made  a  movement  of  impatience  at  the  cold,  and  uttered  irreverential  words 
toward  God.  A  proces-verbal  was  made  out  against  him.  He  appeared  before 
the  judges,  who  condemned  him  for  blas]ihemy  to  two  days'  imprisonment.  It  is 
surprising  to  see  Switzerland  carried,  actually  by  Protestantism,  back  to  the  Middle 
Ages. 


RELIGION  AXD  XOX-RF.LIGION  AMONG   THE  PEOPLE.      255 

Finally,  to   the  political  superiority  of   Protestantism  must 

be  added  the  intellectual  and   moral  superiority  of  its  clergy; 

The   obligation   to   read   and   interpret  the  Bible 

Intellectual  and   j        criveu  rise,  in  the    universities  of  Protestant 

moral  superiority  fc>  ' 

ofProtestant  theology,  to  a  work  of  exegesis  which  has 
^  "^^*  resulted  in  a  new  science,  the  Science  of  Religion. 

The  Protestant  clergymen  are  better  educated  than  our  priests, 
and  have  moreover  families  and  children,  and  lead  a  life  like 
that  of  any  other  citizen  ;  they  are  national,  because  their 
church  is  a  national  church  ;  they  do  not  receive  orders  from 
abroad,  and,  more  than  all,  they  do  not  possess  the  terrible 
power  which  the  Catholic  priest  owes  to  the  confessional  ; 
a  power  which  cost  France  the  Revocation  of  the  Edict  of 
Nantes  and  so  many  other  deplorable  measures.' 

The  several  advantages  which  Protestantism  enjoys  by  com- 
parison with  Catholicism  are  so  incontestable  that,  if  one  must 

absolutely  choose  between  the  two  religions,  one 
But  Protestant-  .  .... 

ism  is  not  a  neces-  COUld  not  hesitate,  nut  such  a  choice  is  not  neces- 
sary step  toward  sary:  one  can  avoid  both  horns  of  the  dilemma, 
free-thought.  .      .  ,        ,  , 

Free-thought  is  even  more  intimately  dependent 

upon,  and  more  disposed  to  favour,  science  than  Protestantism 
is,  for  free-thought  absolutely  depends  upon  science.  Free- 
thought  is  more  intimately  dependent  upon  practical  and  civil 
liberty  than  Protestantism  is,  by  the  very  fact  that  free-thought 
is  the  complete  realization  of  liberty  in  the  sphere  of  theory. 
Finally  free-thought  renders  the  clergy  superfluous,  or  rather  to 
reinstate  a  mediaeval  term  it  tends  to  replace  the  priest  by  the 
clerk,  that  is  to  say  by  the  savant,  the  professor,  the  man  of 
letters,  the  man  of  culture,  to  whatever  state  of  society  he  may 
belong.  The  best  thing  that  has  been  said  about  Protestant- 
ism  in  France  is  AI.de  Narbonne's  remark  to  Napoleon. 
"  There  is  not  enough  religion  in  France  to  make  two^/^  In- 

'"  By  means  of  the  confessional,"  says  M.  de  I.aveleye,  the  "  priest  holds  the 
sovereign,  the  magistrates,  and  the  electors,  and  through  the  electors  the  legislative 
chamber,  in  his  power  ;  so  long  as  the  priest  presides  over  the  sacraments,  the 
separation  of  Church  and  State  is  only  a  dangerous  illusion.  The  absolute  sub- 
mission of  the  entire  ecclesiastical  hierarchy  to  a  single  will,  the  celibacy  of  the 
clergy,  and  the  multiplication  of  monastic  orders,  constitute  a  danger  in  Catholic 
countries  of  which  Protestant  countries  know  nothincr.  " 


256      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

stead  of  a  national  religion  wc  possess  in  France  a  national 
non-religion  ;  that  very  fact  constitutes  our  claim  to  originality 
among  the  nations.  In  France  two-thirds  at  least  of  the  male 
population  live  outside  the  limits  of  religious  tradition.  In 
the  country,  as  in  the  town,  there  is  scarcely  one  man  for  every 
^  ten  women  to  be  found  in  church,  sometimes  not  more  than 
one  for  a  hundred,  and  sometimes  none  at  all.  In  the  majority 
of  the  departments,  scarcely  one  man  can  be  found  fulfilling 
his  religious  duties.  In  the  great  cities,  the  labourer  is  the 
avowed  enemy  of  religion,  in  the  country  the  peasant  is  simply 
indifferent.  The  peasantry  displays  a  certain  respect  for  the 
exterior  forms  of  worship  ;  but  the  reason  is  that  the  peasantry 
comes  in  contact  with  the  priest,  its  intercourse  with  him  is 
constant,  it  generally  fears  or  esteems  him  enough  not  to  laugh 
at  him,  except  behind  his  back.  The  results  of  the  French 
Revolution  cannot  be  arrested  in  this  country  ;  sooner  or 
later  they  will  suf^ce  to  give  birth  to  a  complete  religious, 
political,  and  civil  liberty:  even  to-day  in  politics  it  is  not  in 
the  direction  of  a  lack  of  liberty  that  our  failure  lies,  it  is  quite 
the  reverse.  For  the  French,  it  is  useless  to  talk  of  adopting 
Protestantism  under  the  pretext  that  it  is  favourable  to  civil 
and  political  liberty,  to  diffusion  of  modern  ideas  and  science. 
There  remains  the  consideration  of  public  morality  in 
France.  But  it  is  impossible  to  demonstrate  that  the  morality 
of    Protestant    people    is    superior    to    that    of 

No  sufiBcient  ^      ,      , .  .  ,    ,  ,    •  u  r 

evidence  that         Catholics  ;  nay,  m  respect  to  a  certam  number  ot 

Protestant  coun-     jtcms,  statistics  tend  rather   to    prove   the    con- 
tries  are  more  .  ^^       \^ 
moral  than  Catho-   trary,  if  anything  can  be  proved  of  morality  by 

^°''  statistics.     Drunkenness,  for  example,  is  a  much 

less  terrible  scourge  among  Catholic  peoples  who  inhabit 
climates  in  which  alcohol  constitutes  a  much  smaller  tempta- 
tion. Illegitimate  births  are  much  more  frequent  in  Germany 
than  in  France  ;  no  doubt  because  of  the  laws  that  regulate 
marriage.  The  average  of  crimes  and  offences  is  not  very 
variable  from  country  to  country,  and  such  variations  as  there 
are,  are  attributable  to  difference  of  climate,  of  race,  of  greater 
or  less  density  of  population,  and  not  to  differences  of  religion. 
To-day,  on  account  of  the  increasing  perfection  of  means  of 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AMONG  THE  PEOPLE.      257 

communication,  vice  tends  to  find  its  level.  Vices  spread  like 
contagious  diseases :  everyone  whose  system  is  in  a  state 
which  is  favourable  to  poison  becomes  contaminated,  to  what- 
soever race  or  whatsoever  religion  he  may  belong.  The  effect 
of  any  given  religion  upon  the  morality  of  any  given  people  is 
certainly  not  to  be  overlooked,  but  it  is  altogether  relative  to 
the  character  of  the  people  in  question,  and  proves  nothing 
as  to  the  absolute  moral  quality  of  the  religion  itself.  Mo- 
hammedanism is  of  great  service  to  barbarous  tribes,  because  it 
prohibits  drunkenness,  and  travellers  generally  agree  as  to  the 
moral  superiority  of  Mohammedan  tribes  as  compared  with 
tribes  converted  to  Christianity;  the  first  are  composed  of 
shepherds  and  relatively  honest  merchants,  the  second  are 
composed  of  drunkards,  whom  alcohol  has  transformed  into 
beasts  and  pillagers.  Does  it  follow  that  we  must  all  become 
converted  to  ^Mohammedanism,  or  even  that  the  prohibitions 
of  the  Koran,  all-powerful  as  they  are  over  the  savage  mind, 
Avould  act  with  the  same  force  upon  a  drunkard  of  Paris  or  of 
London  ?  Alas,  no  !  and  in  the  absence  of  any  such  possibility 
one  may  take  refuge  in  this  means  :  sobriety  is  even  more 
important  for  the  masses  of  the  people  than  continence,  its 
absence  borders  more  nearly  on  bestiality;  moreover  the  labour- 
ing man  and  especially  the  peasant  possesses  less  opportunity 
to  run  to  excesses  of  incontinence  than  of  drink,  for  the  simple 
reason  that  women  cost  more  than  drink.  Even  among  the 
followers  of  Mohammed,  the  poor  are  obliged  to  restrict  them- 
selves to  one  w^ife. 

And  finally  religion  does  not  constitute  the  sole  cause  of 
morality;  still  less  is  it  capable  of  re-establishing  a  morality 
which  is  on  a  decline  ;  the  utmost  it  can  do  is  to 
notthe^dTfaaor  maintain  morahty  somewhat  longer  in  existence 
that  determines  than  it  Otherwise  would  be,  to  confirm,  custom 
^^^^   ^'  and  habit  by  a  backing  of  faith.     The  power  of 

custom  and  of  the  accomplished  fact  is  so  considerable  that 
even  religion  can  scarcely  make  head  against  it.  When  a  new 
religion  takes  possession  of  a  people  it  never  destroys  the 
mass  of  the  beliefs  which  have  taken  root  in  their  hearts;  it 
fortifies  them  rather  by  adapting  itself  to  them.     To  conquer 


258      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

paganism,  Christianity  was  obliged  to  transform  itself:  it  be- 
came Latin  in  Latin  countries,  German  in  German  countries. 
Mohammedanism  in  Persia,  in  Hindustan,  in  the  island  of 
Java  serves  simply  as  a  vestment  and  a  veil  for  the  old 
Zoroastrian,  or  Brahman,  or  Buddhistic  beliefs.  Manners, 
national  characters,  and  superstitions  are  more  durable  than 
dogmas.  The  character  of  northern  peoples  is  always  hard 
and  all  of  a  piece,  to  an  extent  that  produces  a  certain  external 
regularity  in  their  lives,  a  certain  submission  to  discipline, 
sometimes  also  a  certain  savageness  and  brutality.  The  men 
of  southern  Europe,  on  the  contrary,  are  mobile,  malleable, 
open  to  temptation.  The  explanation  is  to  be  looked  for  in 
their  climate,  not  in  their  religion.  The  rigid  fir-tree  grows  in 
the  north  ;  flexible,  tall  reeds  in  the  south.  The  discipline  of 
the  Prussian  army  and  administration  does  not  result  from 
the  religion  of  Prussia,  but  from  the  worship  of  discipline. 
Throughout  the  whole  life  of  the  north  there  runs  a  certain 
stiffness  which  shows  itself  in  the  smallest  details,  in  the  manner 
of  walking,  of  speaking,  of  directing  the  eyes  ;  and  the  northern 
conscience  is  brusque  and  rough,  it  commands,  and  one 
must  obey  or  disobey  ;  in  the  south  of  Europe  it  argues.  If 
Italy  were  Protestant,  there  would  probably  be  few  Quakers. 
We  believe  therefore  that  the  effect  is  often  taken  for  the 
cause,  where  a  preponderant  influence  is  attributed  to  the 
Protestant  or  Catholic  religion  on  public  or  private  morality, 
and,  that  is  to  say,  on  the  vital  power  of  a  people.  This 
influence  formerly  was  enormous,  it  is  diminishing  day  by 
day,  and  it  is  science  to-day  which  tends  to  become  the 
principal  arbiter  of  the  destinies  of  a  nation. 

If  it  be  so,  what  must  one  think   of  the  doubts,  as  to  the 

future  of    I'^rance,   which   seem    to   be  entertained   in  certain 

Is  the  posses-      quarters?      Those    who    regard    religion    as    the 

sion  of  a  religion     condition  siiic  qua  non  of  life  and  of  superiority 

indispensable  for      .  ,        ^  . 

the  best  interests  "1  the  Struggle  for  existence  among  nations, 
ofhnmanity.  must  naturally  consider  France  as  in  danger  of 

disappearing.  But  is  this  criterion  of  national  vitality 
admissible  ? 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AMONG  THE  PEOPLE.      259 

We  find  ourselves  here  once  more  in  the  presence  of  Mr. 
Matthew    Arnold.      In  his  judgment,  the  modern  world    has 

been  made  what  it  is  by  the  influence  of  two 
nold's^theor^'^"      peoples,  the  Greeks  and   the  Jews,  representing 

respectively  two  distinct  and  almost  opposed 
ideas,  which  are  contending  with  each  other  for  the  possession 
of  the  modern  mind.  For  Greece — the  brilliant,  but  in  spite 
of  its  subtlety  of  spirit,  somewhat  superficial  Greece — art  and 
science  fill  the  measure  of  life.  For  the  Hebrews  life  might 
be  summed  up  in  one  word,  justice.  And  by  justice  must  not 
be  understood  a  rigid  respect  for  the  rights  of  others,  but 
a  willingness  to  renounce  one's  own  interest,  one's  own 
pleasure,  a  self-effacement  in  the  presence  of  the  eternal 
law  of  sacrifice  personified  in  Javch.  Greece  and  Judea 
are  dead  ;  Greece  faithful  to  the  last  moment  to  its  belief 
in  the  all-sufficiency  of  art  and  science,  Judea  faithless  at 
the  last  moment  to  its  belief  in  the  all-sufficiency  of  justice, 
and  falling  by  reason  of  that  very  infidelity.  Mr.  Matthew 
Arnold  finds  the  two  nations  symbolized  in  an  Old  Testament 
story.  It  was  before  the  birth  of  Isaac,  the  veritable  inheritor 
of  the  divine  promise,  who  was  humble  but  elect.  Abraham 
looked  upon  his  first  son  Ishmael,  who  was  young,  vigorous, 
brilliant,  and  daring,  and  implored  God:  "  Oh,  that  Ishmael 
might  live  before  Thee  !  "  But  it  could  not  be.  Greece,  the 
Ishmael  among  nations,  has  perished.  Later  the  Renaissance 
appeared  as  its  successor ;  the  Renaissance  was  full  of  vitality, 
of  future  ;  the  dream,  the  sombre  nightmare  had  passed  away, 
there  was  to  be  no  more  religious  asceticism,  we  were  to  return 
to  nature.  The  Renaissance  held  in  horror  the  tonsured  and 
hooded  Dark  Ages,  whose  spirit  was  renouncement  and  morti- 
fication. For  the  Renaissance  itself  the  ideal  was  fulness  of 
life,  growth  of  the  individual,  the  free  and  joyous  satisfaction 
of  all  our  instincts,  of  art  and  science  ;  Rabelais  was  the  per- 
sonification of  it.  Alas!  the  Renaissance  fell,  as  Greece  fell, 
and  the  natural  successor  of  the  Renaissance,  in  Mr.  Matthew 
Arnold's  judgment,  is  George  Fox,  the  first  Quaker,  the  open 
contemner  of  arts  and  sciences.  Finally,  in  our  days,  a 
people  in  Europe  has  taken  up  the  succession  ;  the  modern 


26o      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

Greece,  dear  to  the  enlightenment  of  all  nations,  the  friend 
of  art  and  science,  is  France.  How  often,  and  with  what 
ardour,  has  this  prayer  in  its  favour  been  raised  to  God  in 
heaven  :  "  Oh,  that  Ishmael  might  live  before  Thee  !  "  France 
is  the  average  sensual  man,  and  Paris  is  his  city,  and  who  of 
us  does  not  feel  himself  attracted  ?  The  French  possess  this 
element  of  superiority  over  the  Renaissance,  that  they  are 
more  balanced  than  other  peoples,  and  though  France  has 
aimed  to  liberate  mankind  and  to  enfranchise  them  from  the. 
austere  rule  of  sacrifice,  she  has  not  conceived  man  as  a  monster, 
nor  liberty  as  a  species  of  madness.  Her  ideas  are  formulated 
in  a  system  of  education  which  lies  in  the  regular,  complete, 
and  harmonious  development  of  all  the  faculties.  Accord- 
ingly the  French  ideal  does  not  shock  other  nations,  it  seduces 
them  ;  France  is  for  them  the  land  of  tact,  of  measure,  of  good 
sense,  of  logic.  We  aim  in  perfect  confidence  at  developing 
the  whole  human  being  without  violence  to  any  part  of  it.  It 
is  in  this  ideal  that  we  have  found  our  famous  gospel  of  the 
rights  of  man.  The  rights  of  man  consist  simply  in  a  sys- 
tematization  of  Greek  and  French  ideas,  in  a  consecration 
of  the  supremacy  of  self,  as  against  abnegation  and  religious 
sacrifice.  In  France,  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  says,  the  desires 
of  the  flesh,  and  current  ideas,  are  mistaken  for  the  rights  of 
man.  While  we  are  pursuing  one  ideal,  other  peoples, 
more  tightly  chained  to  Hebraism,  continue  to  cultivate 
that  justice  which  is  founded  on  renouncement.  From 
time  to  time  they  look  with  envy  out  of  their  own  austere  and 
dull  life,  and  with  admiration  upon  the  French  ideal  which  is 
so  positive,  so  clear,  so  satisfying  ;  they  are  half  inclined  at 
times  to  make  a  trial  of  it.  France  has  exerted  a  charm  on 
the  entire  world.  Everyone  at  some  period  or  other  of  his 
life  has  thirsted  for  the  French  ideal,  has  desired  to  make  a 
trial  of  it.  The  French  wear  the  guise  of  the  people  to  whom 
has  been  intrusted  the  beautiful,  the  charming  ideal  of  the 
future,  and  other  nations  cry:  "Oh,  that  Ishmael  might  live 
before  Thee  !  "  And  Ishmael  seems  to  grow  more  and  more 
brilliant  each  day,  seems  certain  of  success,  is  on  the  point  of 
making  the  conquest  of  the  world.     But  at  this  moment  a  dis- 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AMONG  THE  PEOPLE.      261 

aster  occurs,  the  Crisis,  the  Biblical  judgment  arrives  at  the 
moment  of  triumph  ;  behold  the  judgment  of  the  world  !  The 
world,  in  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold's  opinion,  was  judged  in  1870: 
the  Prussians  were  Javeh's  substitute.  And  once  more  Ish- 
mael,  the  spirit  of  Greece,  the  spirit  of  the  Renaissance,  the 
spirit  of  France,  free-thought,  and  free  conduct  were  con- 
quered by  Israel,  by  the  spirit  of  the  Bible,  by  the  spirit  of 
the  Middle  Ages.  A  brilliant  but  superficial  civilization  was 
crushed  beneath  the  weight  of  the  barbarous  and  unyielding 
asceticism  of  a  more  or  less  naive  faith.  Javeh  is  even  in  the 
present  century  the  god  of  battles,  and  woe  to  the  individuals 
who  do  not  believe,  with  the  ancient  Jew,  that  abnegation 
constitutes  three-fourths  of  life,  and  that  art  and  science 
together  barely  fill  the  other  fourth. 

Rightly  to  estimate  this  philosophy  of  history  let  us  occupy 

Matthew  Arnold's  point    of  view,  which  is  not  without  some 

„.  ,   .  shade    of    truth.     Assuredly  Greece    and  Judea, 

Victorious  ■'  •' 

superiority  of       although  their  ideas  dissolved  into  and  became  a 
e  enism.  ^^^j.  ^^  Christianity,  are,  so  to  speak,  two  anti- 

thetical nations  representing  respectively  two  opposed  con- 
ceptions of  life  and  of  the  world.  These  two  nations  have 
unceasingly  struggled  against  each  other  in  intellectual  battle, 
and  one  may  accept  as  most  honourable  for  France  the  role 
that  Mr.  Arnold  has  assigned  to  her,  that  of  being  the  modern 
Greece,  of  representing  the  struggle  of  art  and  science  against 
mystical  and  ascetic  faith.  Greece  and  France  were  conquered, 
it  is  true,  but  it  does  not  follow  from  that  fact  that  the  spirit 
of  Greece  and  France,  of  art  and  science,  has  been  conquered 
by  faith.  The  battle  is  on  the  definitive  issue  still  uncertain. 
If  one  must  trust  to  a  calculation  of  probabilities,  all  the  prob- 
abilities are  in  favour  of  science  ;  if  the  French  were  con- 
quered in  1870,  it  was  not  by  German  religion  but  by  German 
science.  In  general  it  is  very  difficult  to  say  that  a  doctrine 
is  inferior  because  the  people  who  maintained  it  have  been 
vanquished  in  history.  History  is  a  succession  of  events 
whose  causes  are  so  complex  that  we  never  can  affirm  that  we 
know  absolutely  all  of  the  reasons  which  produced  any  given 
historical  fact.     There  are,  moreover,  in  the  life  of  any  people 


262      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

a  number  of  currents  of  thought  running  side  by  side,  and 
sometimes  in  opposite  directions.  The  land  of  Rabelais  is 
also  that  of  Calvin.  More  than  that,  in  other  nations  we  see 
a  species  of  official  doctrine  professed  by  a  series  of  remark- 
able thinkers,  which  seems  more  or  less  in  opposition  to  the 
more  unconscious  doctrine  of  the  people,  in  which  the  con- 
duct and  thoughts  of  the  great  multitude  may  be  regarded  as 
summarized.  What,  for  example,  is  to  be  considered  as  the 
true  doctrine  of  the  Jewish  people?  Is  it  the  passionate  faith. 
of  Moses,  of  Elijah,  or  of  Isaiah  ;  is  it  the  scepticism  of  the 
Ecclesiast,  already  foreshadowed  in  the  book  of  Job;  is  it  the 
explosion  of  sensuality  in  the  Song  of  Songs  ?  It  is  difficult  to 
decide  ;  it  may  be  affirmed  with  some  show  of  truth  that  the 
temperament  of  the  Jewish  people  as  a  whole  is  rather  more 
sensual  than  mystic.  The  official  doctrine  handed  down  to  us 
in  the  Bible  may  be  regarded  as  a  reaction  against  popular 
tendencies  ;  a  reaction  whose  violence  is  the  measure  of  the 
strength  and  stubbornness  of  the  tendencies  against  which  it 
was  directed.  The  great  days  of  the  Hebrew  people  were 
rather  those  when,  under  the  reign  of  Solomon,  the  arts  of 
ease  and  life  were  flourishing  than  those  when  the  prophets 
were  bewailing  the  disappearance  of  so  much  splendour.  Or 
what  was  really  the  spirit  of  the  people  in  the  Middle  Ages? 
Is  it  to  be  found  in  the  mystical  books  of  the  monks  of  the 
times  ?  And  are  the  Middle  Ages,  apart  from  the  Renaissance, 
to  be  regarded  as  constituting  a  great  and  completed  epoch  ? 
Even  if  we  supposed,  with  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  that  every 
brilliant  age,  such  as  the  Renaissance,  every  age  of  art  and 
science,  harbours  in  its  own  bosom  the  germs  of  death,  does 
that  fact  constitute  a  reason  for  lowering  one's  estimate  of 
such  epochs  of  intense  life,  and  is  it  not  better  for  a  people  to 
have  lived,  even  though  but  for  a  few  years,  than  to  have  slept 
through  centuries  ? 

Nothing  is  eternal.  When  a  nation  has  enjoyed  a  brilliant 
life  during  a  certain  number  of  years  or  centuries,  when  it  has 
produced  great  artists  or  great  scholars,  there  necessarily 
comes  a  period  of  comparative  exhaustion.  Religions  also  are 
subject  to  the  law  of  birth,  maturity,  and  decay.     Where  does 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AMONG  THE  PEOPLE.      263 

the  responsibility  lie  ?     On  the  very  laws  of  life,  which  do  not 
permit  plants  to  blossom  eternally,  and  which  in  general  pro- 
vide, in  all    the  kingdoms  of  the   natural    world, 
tween  life  of        that  there  shall  be  nothing  so  fragile  as  a  flower. 

nation  and  that  of  Y>\.\\.  if  all  human  things  are  transitory,  to  labour 
individual.  *^  •' 

for   the    ernorescence   of    intelligence,    to   regard 

art  and  science  as  the  supreme  aim  of  life,  is  precisely  to 
pursue  that  which  is  least  perishable.  Art,  science,  the  last 
achievements  of  the  human  mind  do  not  decay  ;  man  alone, 
the  individual  disappears,  and  the  ancient  adage  is  eternally 
true:  "Art  is  long,  and  life  is  short."  As  to  true  justice,  it 
also  is  surely  eternal ;  but  if  by  true  justice  be  understood  the 
hard  law  of  Jehovah,  the  worship  of  this  law  has  always  fallen 
upon  the  insignificant  epochs  of  history,  and  precisely  upon 
the  epochs  of  injustice  and  barbarism.  Therein  lies  the  explana- 
tion of  the  fact  that  that  cult  has  flourished  at  periods  when 
nations  were  the  most  robust  and  difficult  to  subdue.  The 
manners  of  such  nations  are  ferocious,  their  life  at  bottom  is 
quite  contrary  to  the  ideal  of  justice,  and  their  religious  faith 
resembles  their  manners,  and  is  violent  and  savage,  and  inclines 
them  to  intolerance,  to  fanaticism,  to  massacre  ;  but  all  these 
elements  of  injustice  none  the  less  constitute,  in  the  people  that 
unites  them  all,  so  many  additional  chances  of  victory  over 
otsJier  people.  Later,  when  manners  become  more  civilized, 
when  faith  diminishes  and  art  and  science  are  born,  a  nation 
often  becomes  weaker,  directly  as  it  becomes  nobler  ;  the  finer 
an  organism  is,  the  more  delicate  it  becomes,  the  easier  it  is  to 
break.  Renouncement  of  self,  submission  of  the  weak  to  the 
strong,  and  of  the  strongest  to  an  all-powerful  priest,  the  species 
of  hierarchy  that  obtained  in  Judea,  in  India,  and  Europe 
during  the  Middle  Ages,  formerly  gave  a  people  a  superiority 
in  the  struggle  for  existence,  like  that  of  a  rock  over  a  vege- 
table, of  an  oak  over  a  sensitive-plant,  of  a  bull  or  an  elephant 
over  man  ;  but  is  precisely  that  kind  of  effectiveness  the  ideal  of 
humanity,  and  the  aim  to  be  proposed  to  human  effort?  To 
raise  art  and  science  to  their  highest  possible  development 
exacts  a  considerable  expense  of  force  ;  art  and  science  fatigue 
and  exhaust  the  people  who  give  them  birth.     After  epochs 


264      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

of  effervescence,  follow  epochs  of  repose  and  of  recuperation, 
epochs,  so  to  speak,  of  intellectual  lying  fallow.  These  alterna- 
tions of  repose  and  productivity,  of  sterility  and  fecundity  will 
continue  to  recur  until  some  means  be  found  of  maintaining 
the  human  mind  continuously  in  its  state  of  highest  vitality, 
as  one  fertilizes  the  earth,  and,  so  to  speak,  thus  secures  a  con- 
stant flow  of  sap  and  a  perpetual  efflorescence.  The  day  per- 
haps will  come  when  the  psychic  analogue  of  the  rotation 
of  crops  may  be  discovered.  However  that  may  be,  the 
greatness  of  a  people  has  in  the  past  too  often  exhausted  it. 
But  it  does  not  follow,  from  that  fact,  that  history  must  be 
read  backward,  and  that  periods  of  mere  preparation  and 
barbarism  and  despotism  must  be  regarded  as  those  which  are 
the  incarnation  of  the  law  of  justice  and  have  saved  the  race 
of  mankind. 

If  greatness  kills  it  is  beautiful  to  die  for  greatness;  but 
when  it  is  the  death  of  a  nation  that  is  in  question,  mortality 

„ ,,    .  is    never    complete.     Which    is    the    more    com- 

Hellenism  con-  ^ 

tains  the  cure  of  pletely  alivc  to-day,  whatever  Mr.  Matthew 
its  own  evils.  Arnold  may  say,  Greece  or  Judea?  Which  will 
be  more  alive  to-morrow,  France,  which  to-day  seems  trampled 
underfoot,  or  the  nations  which  seem  to  be  France's  supe- 
riors? If  we  were  perfectly  sure  that  France,  better  than  any 
other  nation,  represents  art  and  science,  we  might  afifirm 
with  perfect  certitude  that  she  will  possess  the  future,  and  say 
with  confidence  that  Ishmael  will  live.  It  is  true  that,  in  Mr. 
Matthew  Arnold's  opinion,  Ishmael  represents  not  only  the 
man  of  intellect  but  the  man  of  the  senses,  of  the  desires  of 
the  flesh.  Of  a  truth  it  is  strange  to  see  anyone  regarding  the 
conquerors  of  France  as  Quakers,  and  Paris  can  lay  no  better 
claim  than  London  or  Berlin  to  being  dubbed  the  modern 
Babylon.  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold's  mystic  terrors  in  this  con- 
nection are  really  deserving  of  raillery.  What  is  just  in  his 
position  is  that  the  French,  even  in  the  pursuit  of  pleasure, 
display  a  certain  moderation  and  measure,  display  a  degree  of 
art  that  is  unknown  to  other  people  ;  and  by  that  very  fact 
they  achieve,  if  not  the  substance,  at  least  the  form  of  morality, 
which  is,  as  Aristotle  has  said,  a  just  mean  between  two  vicious 


RELIGIO.y  AND  NON-RELIGIOiV  AMONG  THE  PEOPLE.      265 

extremes.  In  ]\Ir.  Matthew  Arnold's  judgment,  however, 
this  specious  moraHty  serves  simply  as  a  cloak  for  the  lowest 
degree  of  immorality,  that  namely  of  seeking  one's  rule  of 
life  not  in  God  but  in  human  nature,  with  all  its  diverse  ten- 
dencies, high  and  low.  This  immorality  constitutes  in  its  turn  a 
sort  of  social  danger,  that  of  a  softening  or  enfeeblement  of 
the  national  character  of  a  people.  This  danger  appears  to  us 
illusory,  or  rather,  if  one  may  so  speak,  it  is  a  question  which 
belongs  rather  to  hygiene  than  to  morals ;  what  is  really 
wanted  is  that  science  itself  should  discover  in  the  matter  a 
rule  of  conduct.  In  reality,  genuine  men  of  science  actually 
are  those  who  know  best  how  to  direct  themselves  in  life,  and 
a  whole  people  of  men  of  science  could  leave  little  to  desire 
on  the  score  of  conduct ;  and  that  fact  shows  that  science 
itself  contains  an  element  of  practical  wisdom  and  morality. 
Note  also  that  there  exists  an  antagonism  between  cerebral 
labour  and  the  violence  of  the  physical  appetites.  The  pro- 
hibitions which  are  based  upon  a  mystical  law  too  often 
season  desire  simply,  as  it  is  easy  to  prove  by  examples  drawn 
from  the  clergy  of  the  Middle  Ages.  A  much  more  certain 
method  may  be  employed,  namely,  to  extinguish  desire,  to 
substitute  a  sort  of  intellectual  disdain  in  place  of  religious 
terror.  The  Mohammedan  religion  prohibits  the  use  of  wine; 
but  it  is  very  easy  to  distinguish  between  wine  and  alcohol, 
which  Mohammed  did  not  formerly  forbid  for  the  sufficient 
reason  that  he  was  unacquainted  with  its  existence.  More- 
over, religious  faith  is  not  only  subject  to  subtleties  of  interpre- 
tation, it  is  subject  to  periods  of  weakness  ;  but  if,  on  the 
contrary,  you  issue  no  mystical  prohibition  but  cultivate  a 
man  to  a  certain  degree  of  intellectual  development,  he  will 
simply  not  desire  to  drink;  education  will  have  transformed 
him  more  perfectly  than  religion  could  have  done.  Far  from 
diminishing  the  value  that  individuals  set  upon  pleasure, 
religions  in  reality  frequently  augment  it  considerably,  because, 
over  and  against  such  and  such  a  pleasure,  and,  as  it  were, 
holding  the  balance  level  against  it,  they  establish  an  eternity 
of  pain.  When  a  religious  devotee  yields  to  temptation, 
he   conceives  the  desired  indulgence  as,  in   some  sort,  of   an 


266      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

infinite  value,  as  condensing  into  an  instant  such  an  eternity 
of  joy  as  may  compensate  an  eternity  of  suffering.  This  con- 
cejition,  which  unconsciously  dominates  the  entire  conduct 
of  the  believer,  is  fundamentally  immoral.  Fear  of  chastise- 
ment, as  psychologists  have  frequently  remarked,  lends  a 
certain  additional  charm  to  the  forbidden  pleasure  ;  magnify 
the  chastisement,  you  heighten  the  charm.  Therein  lies  the 
explanation  of  the  fact  that,  if  a  devotee  is  immoral  at  all,  he 
is  infinitely  more  so  than  a  sceptic  ;  he  will  indulge  in  mon-^ 
strous  refinements  in  his  pleasures,  analogous  to  the  mon- 
strous refinements  in  which  his  god  indulges,  in  the  item  of 
punishments:  and  his  virtue,  consisting  largely  in  fear,  is 
itself  fundamentally  immoral.  In  epochs  of  scientific  develop- 
ment this  mystical  and  diabolical  heightening  of  pleasure  will 
disappear.  The  man  of  science  is  acquainted  with  the  causes 
of  pleasure,  they  fall  into  place  in  his  scheme  of  things,  in  the 
general  network  of  causes  and  effects  ;  a  pleasure  is  a  desirable 
effect,  but  only  in  so  far  as  it  does  not  exclude  such  and  such 
another  equally  desirable  effect.  The  pleasures  of  the  senses 
take  their  legitimate  rank  in  the  classified  and  subordinated 
list  of  human  aims.  A  man  of  large  intelligence  holds  desire 
in  check  by  means  of  its  natural  and  sole  all-powerful  antag- 
onist— disdain. 

To  sum  it  all  up,  Ishmael  is  quite  capable  of  regulating  his 
own  conduct  without  Jehovah's  help.  Justice  is  salvation,  said 
the  Hebrew  people  ;  but  science  also  is  salvation, 
iu?thai1usS^  and  justice  too,  and  justice  not  infrequently  more 
just  and  more  certain  than  any  other  kind.  If 
Ishmael  sometimes  strays  into  the  desert,  sometimes  loses  his 
way  and  falls,  he  knows  how  to  get  up  again ;  he  has  strength 
enough  in  his  own  heart  to  help  himself,  and  to  make  him 
independent  of  Jehovah,  who  left  him  alone  in  infinite  space 
without  even  sending  to  his  aid  the  angel  mentioned  in  the 
Bible.  If  France  has  really,  as  Mr.  Arnold  says,  formulated 
the  new  gospel  of  Ishmael,  this  profoundly  human  gospel  is 
indubitably  destined  to  outlive  the  other,  for  there  is  often 
nothing  more  provisional,  more  unlasting,  more  fragile,  than 
what    men    have    crowned    with    the    adjective    divine.     The 


RELIGIOX  AND  NOX-RELIGION  AMONG  THE  PEOPLE.      267 

surest  method  of  finding  what  is  really  eternal  is  to  look  for 
the  best  and  most  universal  elements  in  the  human  character. 
But  the  gospel  of  the  rights  of  man,  Mr.  Arnold  objects,  is  the 
ideal  of  the  average,  sensual  man  only.  One  wonders  what 
the  meaning  of  the  word  "  sensual"  in  this  place  can  be,  and 
what  sensuality  can  have  to  do  with  an  unwillingness  to  dis- 
regard the  rights  of  other  people  or  to  have  one's  own  rights 
disregarded  by  other  people.  As  if  the  rights  of  man  Jiad  any- 
thing to  do  with  sensuality  !  ]\Ir.  Arnold  forgets  that  the 
word  "  right"  always  implies  some  measure  of  sacrifice.  But 
the  sacrifice  is  precisely  proportionate — it  is  not  the  sacrifice 
of  all  for  the  benefit  of  one  or  of  the  few;  it  is  not  a  sterile 
sacrifice,  it  is  not  a  vain  expense  of  force,  it  is  the  partial 
sacrifice  of  all  for  the  benefit  of  all,  it  is  the  renunciation  in 
our  own  conduct  of  everything  which  might  interfere  with  like 
conduct  on  the  part  of  other  people  ;  so  that,  instead  of  being 
a  waste  of  social  power,  it  is  in  the  best  sense  an  organization 
and  an  increase  of  social  power.  The  people  who  first  truly 
realize  the  gospel  of  the  rights  of  man  will  not  only  be  the 
most  brilliant,  the  most  enviable,  the  happiest  of  peoples,  but 
also  the  justest  of  peoples,  with  a  justice  which  will  be  not 
only  national  and  passing,  but,  so  to  speak,  universal  and 
indestructible  ;  not  even  the  hand  of  Jehovah  will  be  able  to 
shiver  its  power,  for  what  is  really  divine  in  power  will  dwell 
in  its  own  heart.  The  French  Revolution  was  not  so  purely 
sensual  and  earthly  as  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  affirms.  It  was 
an  uprising  not  in  the  name  of  the  senses  but  of  the  reason. 
The  Declaration  of  Rights  is  a  series  of  formulae  a  priori,  con- 
stituting a  sort  of  metaphysics  or  religion  of  civil  government, 
founded  upon  a  revelation  by  the  human  conscience.  It  is 
easily  comprehensible  that  positive  and  empirical  thinkers, 
such  as  Bentham  and  John  Stuart  Mill  and  Taine,  should  have 
a  word  of  blame  for  this  novel  species  of  religious  Utopia;  but 
a  person  like  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  who  prides  himself  on 
being  religious,  ought  not  to  draw  back  from  it,  ought  even  to 
admire  it.  Theodore  Parker,  a  Christian  not  less  liberal  than 
Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  did  so.  Writing  on  the  subject  of  the 
French  Revolution,  Theodore   Parker  said  :    that    the  French 


268      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

were  more  transcendental  than  the  Americans.  To  the  intel- 
lectual conception  of  liberty  and  to  the  moral  conception  of 
equality  they  joined  the  religious  conception  of  fraternity,  and 
thus  supplied  politics  as  well  as  legislation  with  a  divine  found- 
ation as  incontestable  as  the  truths  of  mathematics.  They 
declare  that  rights  and  duties  precede  and  dominate  human 
law.  America  says :  "  The  Constitution  of  the  United  States  is 
above  the  President ;  the  Supreme  Court  is  above  Congress." 
France  says :  "  The  constitution  of  the  universe  is  above  the 
Constitution  of  France  !  "  That  is  what  forty  millions  of  men 
declare.  It  is  the  greatest  proclamation  that  a  nation  has  ever 
made  in  history. 

What  we  may  reasonably  be  reproached  with  is  not  our  love 
for  art  and  science,  but  our  love  for  a  facile  art  and  a  superficial 

science.     We  may  rightfully  be  reproached  also 

Good  and  evil  .   ,  ,  a      •      ,•    ,  ,      ,        r 

sides  of  French       With  a  somewhat  Attic  liglitness,  a   lack  of   per- 

S^'iety.  severance    and    of    seriousness.        Naturally,  one 

does  not  mean  that  we  should  imitate  the  superstitious  Slave 
who  attributes  an  involuntary  burst  of  laughter  to  the  devil, 
and  who,  after  having  laughed,  expectorates  indignantly  to 
exorcise  the  sweet  spirit  of  gaiety  whom  he  regards  as  a 
spirit  of  evil.  If  French  gaiety  is  one  of  our  weaknesses  it  is 
also  one  of  the  elements  of  our  national  strength  ;  but  let  us 
be  quite  clear  about  the  sense  to  be  put  upon  the  Avord.  The 
gaiety  which  is  genuine  and  charming  consists  simply  in  high- 
heartedness  and  vivacity  of  mind.  One's  courage  is  strong 
enough,  confident  enough,  to  be  able  to  afford  not  to  look 
at  things  on  their  painful  side.  Everything  has  two  handles, 
says  the  Greek  sage  ;  and  by  one  handle  it  is  light  and  easy  to 
manage  ;  it  is  by  that  handle  that  the  French  are  fond  of  tak- 
ing destiny  and  fortune.  Gaiety  of  that  kind  is  simply  a  form 
of  hope  ;  thoughts  which  come  from  the  heart,  great  thoughts 
are  often  the  most  smiling.  What  one  calls  aptness,  that  swift 
fitness  and  appropriateness  in  which  the  French  delight,  is 
itself  an  evidence  of  mental  detachment,  an  af^rmation  to  the 
effect  that  things  which  appeared  at  first  so  enormous  really 
possess  slight  importance,  a  mark  of  high  courage  in  the  face 
of  disaster;    it  is   simply  a  less    theatrical   rendering  of   the 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AMONG  THE  PEOPLE.      269 

ancient  non  dolct.     A  French  officer,  in  a  guerilla  war  (in  New 
Caledonia,  I  think),  felt  himself  struck  in  the  breast  by  a  bullet ; 
"  Well  aimed,  for  a  savage,"  he  said,  as  he  fell.     That  is  French 
heroism  ;  not  going  the  length  of  ignoring  the  fact,  but  main- 
taining a  just  appreciation  of  it  as  it  is.     But  there  is  a  gaiety 
that  cannot  be  too  much  blamed  or  too  steadily  repressed,  a 
gaiety  undistinguished  by  subtlety  or  high  courage,  and  one  to 
which  other  peoples  are  quite  as  inclined  as  the   French,  the 
gross  laugh  which  follows  horse-play  like  an  echo,  and  inhabits 
taverns  and   caf(^s  cJia7itants.     That   species   of  gaiety   is  the 
vicious  gaiety  of  peasants  out    for   a   holiday,  of  commercial 
travellers  at  dinner.      It   is  undeniable   that   the   Gaul  has   a 
weakness  iov  gatidriole.     I  know  a  promising  young  physician 
who  was  obliged  to  leave  Paris,  where  he  had  won  a  name  as 
a  hospital  surgeon,  obliged  to  quit  work  and  to  go  to  a  distant 
country  for  his  health  ;   in  a  moment  of  expansion  he  confided 
to  me  that  what  he  regretted  most  were  the  jolly  evenings  at 
the  Palais-Royal.     There  are  thousands  of  distinguished  young 
men  subjected  to  this    species   of  education,  of  discipline   in 
"  chaff,"  and  it  is  inevitable  that  it  should  result  in  a  loss,  for 
them,    of    something    that     is    fine.       The    Palais-Royal,    the 
vaudeville,  cafes-concerts  are  places  which  corrupt  the  taste  as 
the  palate   is  corrupted   by  drinking  wood  eau-de-vie.     It   is 
difficult  to  be  a  really  remarkable  man  and  at  the  same  time  to 
possess  a    serious  taste    for  the    gross  pleasantry    of  second- 
class  theatres.      The   two    are    irreconcilable.      And    it     is    a 
melancholy  thing  to  think  that  the  pick  of  the  young  men  of 
France  should  be  exposed  to  precisely  that  influence,  should 
pass  a  number  of  years  in  such  an  environment  and  lose  their 
taste  as  surely  as  their  ear  for  music.     Whatever  is  anti-?esthetic 
in   laughter  is   degrading;  witticisms   must  be  spiritual,  must 
really  expand  the  heart  with  healthy  mirth  ;  laughter  should 
positively  embellish  the    face.     Nihil  incpto  risu  incptms  est ; 
the  reason  is  that  in  such  cases  laughter  is  simply  an  explosion 
of  silliness.     The   wise   man,  says   the    Bible,  laughs   with   an 
dinner    laugh.     Laughter  should  illuminate  and   not   disfigure 
the  visage,  because  it  reveals  the  soul,  and  the  soul  should  be 
beautiful,  should  resemble  an  outburst  of  frankness,  of  sincerity. 


270      DISSOLUTION  OF  KELIGIOXS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

The  charm  of  laughter  lies,  in  a  great  measure,  in  the  sincerity 
of  the  joy  which  renders  us,  for  the  time  being,  transparent  to 
those  about  us.  Human  thought  and  the  human  heart,  with 
the  entire  world  that  they  contain,  may  be  embodied  in  a  tear. 
Parisian  wit,  which  in  some  quarters  is  regarded  as  the  very 
type  and  ideal  of  French  wit,  is  in  some  respects  no  more  than 
an  epitome  of  its  defects ;  among  the  working 
epitome  of  all  that  classes  it  consists  in  chaff,  what  they  call  blague; 
is  evil  in  French     among  the  upper  classes  it  consists  in  a  superficial 

gaiety.  .....  _        ,  .      ,  ,       .     ', 

varnish,  an  inability  to  fix  the  mind   on  a  logical 

succession  of  ideas.  In  the  salon  frivolity  is  a  convention,  it 
has  positively  attained  the  height  of  being  good  manners.  My 
attention  was  attracted  a  minute  ago  by  a  fly  buzzing  about  my 
window,  its  transparent  wings  described  curve  after  curve  on 
the  luminous  surface  that  arrested  its  flight.  Its  graceful  and 
futile  progress  reminded  me  of  the  conversation  of  a  lady  to 
whom  I  had  just  been  listening  in  the  salon,  and  who  for  an 
hour  had  described  a  series  of  scarcely  larger  circles,  upon  the 
surfaces  of  everything,  and  beneath  the  surface  of  nothing. 
The  whole  world  of  Parisian  frivolity  was  typefied  by  the 
shimmering  flight  of  the  fly  on  the  window-pane,  ignorant  of 
the  open  air,  playing  with  stray  rays  of  the  great  sun  toward 
which  it  was  unable  to  mount. 

But  must  one  be  serious  to  the  point  of  ennui?  Certainly 
not,  it  is  not  necessary.  It  does  not  belong  to  our  tempera- 
ment. Let  us  recognize,  however,  that  to  be 
enduring  of  ennui  is  a  great  power;  it  is  the 
secret  of  slow,  patient,  painstaking  labour,  which  spares  no 
detail,  which  guarantees  solidity  in  the  foundations  and 
remote  and  hidden  elements  of  knowledge ;  it  is  the  secret  of 
the  superiority  of  men  of  northern  race  over  men  of  southern. 
In  the  south,  owing  to  an  impatience  of  what  is  tedious,  there 
is  manifested  an  inability  to  stick  to  one  thing,  to  follow  one 
pursuit,  to  venture  into  the  darkness  beyond  where  the  light 
stops.  Taskg  pursued  with  obstinacy  in  the  certitude  of  an 
ultimate  success,  indefatigable  labour  at  the  desk,  reading 
understood  as  the  absolute  appropriation  of  every  word  and 
thought  between  the  covers  of  the  book  in  hand,  are  unknown 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AMONG  THE  PEOPLE.      271 

to  those  superficial  intelligences  which  are  quick  to  take  a 
birds-eye  view  of  a  subject  in  its  entirety,  but  are  impatient  of 
details  and  of  course  among  others  of  essential  details.  There 
are  races  of  men  who  are  incapable  of  anything  exacting  more 
attention  than  "skimming";  they  skim  their  books,  they  skim 
the  world,  they  turn  the  leaves  of  life.  Neither  true  art  nor 
true  science  is  within  their  reach.  "  Live  inwardly,"  says  the 
•*  Imitation."  It  is  an  ideal  which  Frenchmen,  who  are  particu- 
larly inclined  to  lose  themselves  in  external  details,  might  well 
pursue.  But  true  inwardness  does  not  necessarily  consist  in 
sterile  meditation  on  a  dogma.  "  Live  inwardly  "  should  signify, 
be  serious,  be  yourself,  be  original,  independent,  and  free ; 
bestir  your  own  powers  of  thought,  take  a  pleasure  in  developing 
them  and  yourself;  bloom  inwardly  like  certain  plants  which 
lock  up  within  themselves  their  pollen,  their  perfume,  their 
beauty  ;  but  give  out  your  fruit.  The  natural  expansiveness 
[which  leads  a  Frenchman  to  be  so  communicative  is  one  of 
his  good  qualities  ;  the  bad  side  of  it,  where  there  is  a  bad 
side,  consists  simply  in  not  having  anything  serious  to 
communicate. 

Our  defects  are  curable,  and  their  remedy  does  not  lie  in  a 
sort  of  religious  asceticism,  but  in  a  more  profound   and  com- 
plete understanding  of  the  great  objects  of  love 

Pr^nrhfi'vfr  ^^^^^  ^^^^^  always  attracted  the  French  mind- 
science,  art,  law,  liberty,  universal  fraternity. 
There  is  a  Japanese  legend  of  a  young  girl  who  procured 
some  flower  seeds  and  was  surprised  to  find  them  nothing  but 
little  black  prickly  grains  ;  she  offered  them  to  her  playmates, 
who  would  not  accept  them  ;  then  she  sowed  them,  in  some 
anxiety  as  to  the  results,  and  by  and  by  a  superb  flower  sprang 
from  every  grain  and  all  her  playmates  begged  for  the  seeds 
that  they  had  refused.  Philosophic  and  scientific  truths  are 
just  such  seeds  ;  they  are  unattractive  at  first,  but  the  day  will 
come  when  mankind  will  prize  them  at  their  just  worth. 


CHAPTER   V. 

RELIGION  AND   NON-RELIGION   AND  THE   CHILD. 

I,  Decline  of  religious  education — Defects  of  this  education,  in 
especial  in  Catholic  countries— Means  of  lightening  these 
defects — The  priest — The  possibility  of  state-action  on  the 
priest, 

IL  Education  provided  by  the  state— Primary  instruction — The 
sclioolmaster— Secondary  and  higher  instruction — Should  the 
iiistory  of  religion  be  introduced  into  the  curriculum. 

III.  Education  at  home — Should  the  father  take  no  part  in  the 
religious  education  of  his  children— Evils  of  a  preliminary 
religious  education  to  be  followed  by  disillusionment — The 
special  question  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul :  what  should  be 
said  to  children  about  death. 

/.  Decline  of  religious  education. 

The  religious  education  given  to  children  by  the  priest  pos- 
sesses defects  and  even  dangers  which  it  is  important  to  set  in 
a   clear   light,    and    which    explain    the    gradual 

Unfitness  of  i      i-  •  i  j         i.-  a  •    • 

religious  dogma      decline     in     secular     education.        An      opinion 
as  material  for       regarded   as   divine    is   an    opinion    which    is  as 

education.  r .    t  r       i         ,  •  r  f 

unnt  tor  purposes  of  education  as  tor  purposes  ot 
science.  The  great  opposition  which  obtains  between  religion 
and  philosophy — in  spite  of  their  outward  resemblances — is 
that  the  one  is  seeking  and  that  the  other  declares  that  it  has 
found  ;  the  one  is  anxious  to  hear,  the  other  has  already 
heard  ;  the  one  weighs  evidence,  the  other  puts  forth  asser- 
tions and  condemnations  ;  the  one  recognizes  it  as  its  duty  to 
raise  objections  and  to  reply  to  them  ;  the  other  to  shut  its 
eyes  to  objections  and  to  difificulties.  From  these  differences 
result  corresponding  differences  in  methods  of  instruction.  A 
philosopher,  a  metaphysician,  aims  to  convince,  the  priest 
inculcates ;  the  former  instructs,  the  latter  reveals  ;  the  former 
endeavours  to  stimulate  and  to  train  the  reasoning,  the  latter 
to  suppress  it  or  at  least  to  turn  it  aside  from  primitive  and 

272 


RELIGION  AND   NON-RELIGION  AND    THE    CHILD.        273 

fundamental  dogmas  ;  the  former  awakens  the  intelHgence, 
the  latter  in  some  measure  lays  it  asleep.  It  is  inevitable  that 
revelations  should  be  opposed  to  spontaneity  and  liberty  of 
mind.  When  God  has  spoken  man  should  be  silent,  in 
especial  when  the  man  is  a  child.  And  errors,  which  are  often 
inoffensive  if  taught  by  a  philosopher,  are  grave  and  dangerous 
if  taught  by  a  priest  who  speaks  in  the  name  and  with  the 
authority  of  God.  In  the  first  instance  the  remedy  lies 
always  at  hand  :  an  insufficient  reason  may  always  be  made  to 
give  way  before  a  sufficient  reason  ;  the  child  holds  the 
standards  of  weight  and  measure  in  his  own  hands.  And 
indeed  it  is  not  always  easy  to  teach  error  at  all  by  reason  and 
reasoning  :  to  attempt  to  give  reasons  for  a  prejudice  is  an 
excellent  means  of  making  its  essential  untruth  prominent. 
It  has  always  been  some  attempt  on  the  part  of  humanity  to 
demonstrate  its  beliefs  that  has  resulted  in  their  disproof. 
Whoever  endeavours  to  examine  a  dogma  is  close  upon  the 
point  of  contradicting  it,  and  the  priest,  who  regards  contra- 
diction as  a  failure  in  faith,  is  always  obliged,  in  the  nature  of 
things,  to  avoid  an  examination  of  it,  to  interdict  a  certain 
number  of  questions,  to  take  refuge  in  mystery.  When  a 
priest  has  filled  a  brain  with  faith  he  seals  it.  Doubt  and 
investigation,  which  are  the  life  of  philosophy,  the  priest 
regards  as  a  mark  of  distrust  and  suspicion,  as  a  sin,  as  an 
impiety;  he  lifts  his  eyes  to  Heaven  at  the  bare  notion  of  any- 
body's thinking  for  himself.  God  is  both  judge  and  party  in 
every  discussion  ;  at  the  very  time  when  you  are  endeavouring 
to  find  reasons  for  believing  in  his  existence.  He  commands 
you  to  affirm  it.  The  believer  who  hesitates  at  a  dogma  is  a 
little  in  the  position  of  the  sheep  in  the  fable,  who  wished  to 
reason  with  the  wolf  and  to  prove  to  him  that  the  water  was 
not  muddy  ;  he  proved  it  indeed,  but  he  was  eaten  up  for  his 
pains  ;  he  would  have  done  just  as  well  to  hold  his  peace  and 
yield.  Also  there  is  nothing  more  difficult  than  to  shake 
yourself  free  from  a  faith  that  was  fastened  upon  you  in  your 
childhood  and  that  has  been  confirmed  by  the  priest,  by 
custom,  by  example,  by  fear.  Fear,  in  especial,  is  a  capital 
guardian  to  watch  over  the  interests  of  positive  religion  and  a 


2  74     DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

religious  education,  a  guardian  who  is  always  on  the  qui  vive  ; 
but  for  it  the  body  of  belief  which  is  known  as  dogma  would 
soon  fall  into  decay  and  blow  away  in  dust.  One  person 
would  reject  this,  another  that ;  everybody  would  rise  in  open 
revolt,  running  hither  and  thither  gaily  like  a  lot  of  school- 
children out  for  a  holiday.  Happily  they  are  always  accom- 
panied by  a  tutor,  who  keeps  them  in  order  and  brings  them 
home  like  a  flock  of  lambs  to  the  sheepcote.  What  power 
can  reasoning  have  over  anybody  who  is  afraid?  How  caji 
you  be  expected  to  see  anything  as  in  itself  it  really  is,  if  you 
have  been  accustomed  from  childhood  to  walk  with  your  eyes 
closed  ?  Truth  becomes  for  you  as  variable  and  unstable  as 
your  own  sensibility.  At  an  audacious  moment  you  deny 
everything,  the  next  day  you  are  prepared  to  af^rm  more  than 
you  were  before.  It  is  very  easy  to  understand  ;  nobody  is 
obliged  to  be  brave  always,  and,  more  than  all,  one's  conscience 
is  involved.  Conscience,  like  government,  is  conservative  ;  it  is 
naturally  inimical  to  revolution  and  change.  It  is  early  taken 
in  hand,  and  taught  its  little  lesson  ;  it  becomes  uneasy  the 
instant  you  call  in  question  a  line  on  the  map  ;  you  cannot 
take  an  independent  step  without  some  inner  voice  crying  out 
to  you  to  take  care.  Accustomed  as  you  are  to  hear  people 
anathematized  who  do  not  think  as  you  do,  you  shudder  at  the 
thought  of  incurring  such  anathemas  yourself.  The  priest  has 
corrupted  to  his  interest  every  sentiment  in  your  soul — fear, 
respect,  remorse  ;  he  has  fashioned  your  soul,  your  character, 
your  morals  to  his  hand.  Insomuch  that  if  you  call  religion 
in  question,  you  call  everything  in  question. 

Subsidence  of  thought,  benumbment  of  the  spirit  of  liberty, 
love   of   routine,  of  blind   tradition,  of  passive   obedience,  of 
Impropriety  of     everything,  in  a  word,  which  is  directly  opposed 
suppressing  the      to   the   spirit  of  modern  science   are  the  results 
'^  "^•^"  of  a  too    exclusively  clerical   education.     These 

dangers  are  being  more  and  more  distinctly  felt,  especially  in 
France — perhaps  too  much  so.  We  go  the  length  of  demand- 
ing that  religious  education  shall  be  suppressed  and  that 
immediately,  as  being  hostile  to  liberty  and  to  progress.  An 
irresistible    movement    has   begun    toward    lay   education,    a 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AND    THE    CHILD         275 

movement  to  which  Catholics  must  some  day  or  other  adjust 
themselves.  But  it  should  be  done  slowly,  transition  should 
not  be  pushed  too  rapidly.  To  suppress  at  a  blow  the  whole 
clergy  who  once  had  complete  control  of  the  national  educa- 
tion, and  still  have  charge  of  some  portion  of  it,  ought  not  to  be 
the  aim  of  free-thinkers  ;  the  clergy  will  suppress  themselves  if 
they  are  but  given  time  ;  they  will  simply  become  extinct.  At 
bottom  it  is  not  a  bad  thing  that  fifty-five  thousand  people 
should  be  or  appear  to  be  occupied  with  something  else  than 
their  personal  wants.  No  doubt  one  never  lives  completely 
up  to  one's  ideal,  and  the  ideal  of  disinterestedness  that  the 
priest  proposes  to  himself  is  rarely  realized  ;  still  it  is  good 
that  a  certain  number  of  men  here  below  should  labour  at  a 
task  which  is  above  their  strength  ;  so  many  others  labour  at 
tasks  only  which  are  beneath  them. 

It  must  be  confessed,  however,  that  no  religion  is  at  its  best 
in  a  country  in  which  it  reigns  supreme;  really  to  estimate  it, 

A  religion  at  its  ^"^  "^"^^  ^^^  '^  struggling  for  supremacy  against 
best  only  in  com-  some  rival  faith,  Catholic  against  Protestant,  for 
^^  ^  ^°^'  example.     Under  such  circumstances    the  priest 

and  the  pastor  in  a  sense  run  a  race  with  each  other,  compete 
with  each  other  in  activity  and  intelligence.  One  may  see  the 
results  in  the  Dauphin^,  in  Alsace,  and  in  a  number  of  foreign 
countries.  The  zeal  of  the  priest  profits  immensely  by  some 
such  struggle  for  existence  on  the  part  of  the  religion  to 
which  he  belongs;  whoever  does  the  most  good,  gives  the 
best  advice,  the  best  education,  to  the  children  in  his  charge, 
wins  a  victory  for  his  faith.  The  result,  which  is  easy  to  fore- 
see, is  that  a  mixed  population  of  Protestants  and  Catholics  is 
better  instructed,  more  enlightened,  is  possessed  of  a  higher 
morality  than  many  other  countries  wholly  Catholic. 

One  very  desirable  step  in  Catholic  countries   is   that   the 

priest  should  be  given  complete  civil  liberty,  should  be  allowed 

^    ,       to  leave  the  Church  if  he  choose,  without  becom- 

rroposed  reform 
in  Catholic  ing  an  outcast  in  society,  should  be  free  to  marry, 

countries.  and  to  enjoy  absolutely  all  the  rights  of  citizen- 

ship. A  second  desirable  step,  and  an  essential  one,  is  that  the 
priest,  who  is  one  of  the  schoolmasters  of  the  nation,  should 


276      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

liimself  receive  a  hi<^her  education  than  he  does  to-day.  The 
state,  far  from  endeavouring  to  diniinisli  the  income  of  the 
priesthood — a  very  slight  economy — might  well,  at  need, 
augment  it  and  exact  diplomas  analogous  to  those  demanded 
of  other  instructors,  and  sufficient  evidences  of  competence  in 
extended  historical  and  scientific  inquiries  and  in  religious 
history.'  Already  a  number  of  priests  in  country  districts  are 
studying  botany,  mineralogy,  and,  in  some  instances,  music. 
The  ranks  of  the  clergy  contain  a  great  quantity  of  live  force,, 
which  is  neutralized  by  a  defective  primary  education,  by  lack 
of  initiative,  by  lack  of  habits  of  freedom.  Instead  of  endeavour- 
ing to  separate  church  and  state  by  a  species  of  surgical  opera- 
tion, free-thinkers  might  well  take  their  stand  on  the  concordat, 
and  profit  by  the  fact  that  the  state  controls  the  income  of  the 
clergy,  and  endeavour  to  reawaken  the  priesthood  to  the  condi- 
tions of  modern  life.  In  sociology,  as  in  mechanics,  it  is  some- 
times easier  to  make  use  of  the  obstacles  to  one's  advancement 
than  to  try  to  batter  them  down.  Whatever  is,  is  in  some  meas- 
ure useful ;  from  the  very  fact  that  clerical  education  still  main- 
tains its  existence  it  may  be  argued  that  it  still  plays  a  certain 
role  in  maintaining  the  social  equilibrium,  even  if  it  be  but  a 
passive  role,  the  role  of  counterpoise.  But  whatever  possesses 
some  degree  of  utility  may  well  acquire  a  higher  degree  ;  what- 
ever is  may  be  transformed.  We  must  not  endeavour  to  destroy 
the  priesthood  but  to  transform  it ;  to  supply  it  with  other 
practical  and  theoretical  pursuits  than  the  mechanical  han- 
dling of  the  breviary.  Between  the  literal  religion  which  the 
majority  of  the  French  clergy  teach,  and  a  national  and 
human  ideal,  there  exist  innumerable  degrees  which  must  be 
achieved  successively  and  slowly,  by  a  gradual  intellectual  prog- 
ress, by  an  almost  insensible  widening  of  the  intellectual  hori- 
zon. Meanwhile,  until  the  priest  shall  have  passed  through 
these  successive  degrees  and  have  become  aware  of  his  essen- 
tial  superfluousness,  it  is  good  that  he  should  make  himself 

'  Would  it  not  be  possible  at  once  to  raise  the  income  of  all  priests  who  are  pos- 
sessed of  certain  lay  diplomas  such  as  those  of  bachelor,  licentiate,  etc.,  and  who, 
by  that  very  fact,  would  be  plainly  competent  to  conduct  a  lay  or  religious  education 
in  a  more  modern  and  scientific  spirit  ? 


RELIGION  AND  NON-KELIGIOX  AXD    THE   CHILD.        277 

useful  in  the  manner  in  which  he  still  believes  himself  capable 
of  being  of  use:  but  one  thing  should  be  exacted  of  him,  that 
he  should  not  make  himself  harmful  by  stepping  outside  of 
the  limits  within  which  he  is  properly  confined. 

//.   Education  provided  by  the   state. 

The  task   undertaken   by   a  state   that   is    endeavouring   to 

substitute  a  lay  for  a  clerical  education  is  one  of  increasing 

importance.     The   law  ought,  no  doubt,  to  rec- 

State  neu-  ^  ° 

trality  in reli-        ognizc    all    religions    as  equal,  but,  as  has  been 

gious  matters,  remarked,'  there  are  two  ways  in  which  this 
recognition  may  be  conducted:  the  one  passive,  the  other 
active.  The  government  may  stand  neutral  simply,  and 
abstain  from  either  refuting  or  from  giving  comfort  to  the 
pretensions  of  any  given  system  of  theology  ;  or  it  may  be 
actively  neuter,  that  is  to  say,  it  may  pursue  its  task  of 
scientific  and  philosophical  achievement  in  complete  indiffer- 
ence to  any  and  every  system  of  theology."  It  is  a  neutrality 
of  the  latter  sort  that  should  be  practised  in  primary  and 
secondary  instruction,  and  that  should  govern  the  conduct  of 
the  instructor. 

The  schoolmaster  has  always  been  a  mark  for  raillery,  and 
sometimes  justly  so  ;   to-day  he  is  slightly  regarded  by  every- 
one with  any  pretensions  to  high  acquirements. 

Importance  of      Rgnan  and  Taine,  and   partisans  generally  of  an 
the  schoolmaster.  '■  o  ^ 

intellectual    aristocracy,    can    scarcely    suppress 

a  smile  at  the  mention  of  this  representative  of  democracy, 

of    science    for    small    children.     University    professors  show 

small  tolerance  for  the  pedantry  of  their  humble  assistant,  who 

is  sometimes  ignorant  of  Greek.     ]\Ien   of  culture,  with    any 

tincture  of  poetry  or  of  art,  regard  the  man  as  something  very 

prosaic  and  utilitarian  whose  main  ambition  is  to  instruct  some 

thousands  of  peasants  in  the  alphabet,  grammar,  and  the  names 

'  M.  Goblet  d'Alviella. 

-"Lay  education,"  said  Littre,  "ought  not  to  avoid  dealing  with  anything 
-which  is  essential ;  and  what  could  be  more  essential  in  considering  the  moral 
government  of  society  than  the  religions  which  have  dominated  or  still  dominate 
it?" 


278     DISSOL  UTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIE  TIES. 

of  the  principal  cities  of  Europe,  and  of  the  geographical 
localities  from  which  we  obtain  pepper  and  coffee.  And  yet 
this  despised  schoolmaster,  whose  importance  is  daily  increas- 
ing, is  the  sole  middle-man  between  the  belated  masses  and 
the  intellectual  61ite,  who  are  moving  ever  more  and  more 
rapidly  forward.  He  has  the  advantage  of  being  necessary  and 
the  disadvantage  of  knowing  it ;  buried  in  his  remote  village,  his 
accomplishments  impress  him  almost  as  much  as  they  do  the 
children  and  the  peasantry  about  him  ;  the  optical  illusion  is 
a  natural  one.  But  if  an  exaggerated  estimate  of  his  own 
importance  sometimes  gives  rise  in  him  to  an  offensive 
pedantry,  it  supplies  him  with  the  sort  of  devotion  that 
enables  a  humble  functionary  to  rise  to  the  height  of  the 
duties  to  which  he  has  been  called.  And  who,  after  all,  but 
society,  is  responsible  for  the  fashioning  and  instruction  of 
the  schoolmaster?  And  cannot  society  raise  the  level  of  his 
intelligence  in  proportion  as  it  increases  the  magnitude  of  his 
task?  A  little  knowledge  makes  a  pedant,  much  knowledge 
makes  a  scholar.  There  will  always  be  schoolmasters  who 
will  be  as  well  educated  as  one  could  wish,  provided  only 
that  their  salaries  are  raised  side  by  side  with  the  list  of 
required  studies.  It  is  strange  that  a  society  should  not  do  its 
best  to  form  those  whose  function  it  is  in  turn  to  form  it.  The 
great  question  of  popular  education  becomes  in  certain  aspects 
a  question  of  shillings  and  pence.  The  practical  instruc- 
tion of  schoolmasters  has  already  been  carried  to  a  certain 
degree  of  perfection  ;  he  has  been  initiated  into  an  apprentice- 
ship, and  introduced,  as  it  were,  into  the  kitchen  of  certain 
sciences;  he  has  been  supplied  with  notions  on  agriculture 
and  chemistry  which  often  enable  him  to  give  excellent  advice 
to  the  peasantry.  It  would  be  very  easy  a  little  to  perfect  his 
theoretical  knowledge,  to  give  him  a  broader  knowledge  of  the 
sciences  which  he  considers  too  exclusively  on  their  practical 
side,  to  give  him  some  conception  of  things  as  a  whole,  to 
raise  him  above  an  exclusive  adoration  of  the  isolated  facts  of 
historical  or  grammatical  minutiae.  A  little  philosophy  would 
make  a  better  historian  and  a  less  tedious  geographer.  He 
might  be  introduced  to  the  great  cosmological  hypotheses,  to 


RELIGION'  AND  NON-RELIGION   AND    THE    CHILD.        279 

some  sufficient  notions  of  psychology,  and  in  especial  of  child- 
psychology,  and  finally  a  little  history  of  religion  would 
familiarize  him  with  the  principal  metaphysical  speculations 
tliat  tlie  luiman  mind  has  put  forth  in  its  endeavour  to  pass 
beyond  the  bounds  of  science  ;  he  would  become,  as  a  result 
of  it,  more  tolerant  in  all  matters  of  religious  belief.  This 
more  extended  instruction  would  permit  him  to  follow  at  a 
distance  the  progress  of  science;  his  intelligence  would  not 
stand  still,  he  would  not  come  to  his  complete  maturity  some- 
where between  the  ABC-book  and  the  grammar.  Moreover, 
intellectual  elevation  is  always  accompanied  by  a  moral  eleva- 
tion which  manifests  itself  in  all  the  conduct  of  life,  and  some- 
times a  word  from  a  schoolmaster  may  change  all  the  rest  of 
a  pupil's  existence.  The  greater  one's  intellectual,  and  in 
especial,  one's  moral  superiority,  the  greater  one's  influence 
over  those  about  one.  Even  at  the  present  time  the  very 
modest  amount  of  knowledge  at  the  disposal  of  the  ordinary 
teacher  gives  him  a  very  genuine  influence  ;  he  is  believed  in, 
his  words  are  listened  to  and  accepted.  The  peasant — that 
doubting  Thomas — who  nowadays  shakes  his  head  over  what 
the  oriest  says,  is  becoming  accustomed  to  consult  the  school- 
master; the  schoolmaster  has  shown  him  how  to  make  more 
grain  grow  in  the  same  amount  of  ground  ;  the  quivering  of  a 
blade  of  grass  in  the  wind  is  for  a  man  of  the  people  the  most 
categorical  of  afifirmations ;  to  accomplish  something  is  to 
prove  :  action  is  ratiocination  enough.  Moreover  the  school- 
master demonstrates  the  practical  power  of  science  by  fashion- 
ing successive  generations  of  mankind,  by  converting  them 
into  men.  It  is  at  the  schoolmaster's  hands  that  everyone 
receives  the  provision  of  knowledge  that  must  last  him  and 
maintain  his  strength  throughout  his  whole  life ;  he  prepares 
one  for  life  as  the  priest  prepares  one  for  death,  and  in  the 
eyes  of  the  peasant,  preparation  for  life  is  much  more  impor- 
tant than  preparation  for  death.  Life  has  its  mystery  as  well 
as  death,  and  in  the  former  case  the  fact  of  one's  capability  is 
certain;  the  schoolmaster  often  determines  the  future  of  the 
pupil  in  a  manner  that  is  visible  and  verifiable  ;  and  nothing 
like  so  much  can  be  said   for  the  priest.     The  power  of  the 


2So      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIE  TIES. 

latter  also  has  diminished  with  the  change  that  has  taken 
place  in  the  popular  notion  of  punishment  after  death.  The 
priest's  power  lies  in  ceremonies,  in  propitiatory  or  expiatory 
sacrifices ;  the  virtue  of  sacrifices  of  both  kinds  equally  is 
to-day  looked  on  sceptically.  Knowledge  is  better  than 
prayer,  and  the  priest  is  gradually  losing  his  ascendency  over 
the  people.  Tiie  schoolmaster  is  often  the  butt  of  raillery,  but 
the  country  priest,  whom  it  was  so  much  the  fashion  to  idealize 
at  the  beginning  of  the  century,  is  to-day  a  mark  for  open  mirth.  • 
The  reaction  was  natural  and  in  some  measure  legitimate ; 
perfection  is  not  of  this  world,  and  dwells  neither  in  the  state 
nor  the  school,  but  the  role  of  the  schoolmaster  and  the  priest 
in  humanity  is  important,  for  they  are  the  sole  dispensers  of 
science  and  metaphysics  to  the  multitude.  We  have  seen 
how  much  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  priest,  who  is  so  ignorant 
to-day  in  Catholic  countries,  will  soon  receive  a  better  educa- 
tion, will  soon  begin  to  create  a  reason  for  his  continued 
existence  in  modern  society.  If  he  falls  too  far  behind  the 
intellectual  movement  of  the  times,  he  will  drop  out  simply, 
and  the  schoolmaster  will  inherit  his  power.  After  all  there 
are  all  kinds  of  apostles,  in  blouse  and  frock-coat  as  well  as  in 
priestly  robes  ;  and  the  proselytism  of  some  of  them  is  based 
upon  a  mystical  disinterestedness,  and  of  others  on  a  certain 
practical  aim  ;  there  are  some  who  travel  about  the  world,  and 
some  who  sit  by  the  fire  and  are  none  the  less  active  for  all 
that.  What  maybe  affirmed  safely  is  that  in  all  times  apostles 
have  been  even  more  disposed  to  address  little  children  than 
men,  and  it  is  notable  that  the  modern  Vincent  de  Paul  was  a 
schoolmaster- Pestalozzi. 

What  is  taking  the   place  of   religious  education,  in  existing 

societies,  is    moral    education.     The  moral   sentiment,  as  we 

know,    is    the    least    suspicious    element    in    the 

tion  the  legitimate  modern    religious    sentiment,    and    metaphysical 

successor  of  reli-     hypotheses,  based  in   the  last  resort   upon  moral 

gious  education,  "^  i   ■    i 

conceptions,  are  the  ultimate  and  highest  out- 
come of  religious  hypotheses.  To  the  elements  of  philosophic 
morality  it  has  been  proposed  to  add,  in  secondary  and  even 
in  primary  instruction,  some  notion  of   the    history    of    reli- 


/ 


RELIGION  AND   NON-RELIGION  AND    THE   CHILD.       28r 

gions.'      If  this   proposition   is  to  be   made  acceptable  it  must 
be  reduced  within  just  Hmits.     Let  us  cherish  no  illusion;   M. 
Vernes  is  wrong  if  he  believes  that  a  professor,  and  in  especial 
a  schoolmaster,  ever  could  dwell  with  insistence  upon  the  his- 
tory of  the  Jews  without  coming  into  conflict  with  the  clergy.    A 
truly  scientific  criticism  of  the  legends  which  are  usually  taught 
children  under  the  name  of  sacred  history  positively  batters 
down   the   very  foundations  of  Christianity.     Clergymen  and 
priests  would  not  endure  it ;  they  would  protest  and  with  some 
show  of  reason  against  it,  in  the   name  of  religious  neutrality  : 
religion  is  not  less  certain  in  their  eyes  than  science,  and  the 
ignorant   faith  that  distinguishes   many  of   them  has   not   yet 
been  tempered  by  a  habit  of  free  criticism  ;  so  that  anything 
like  a  eenuine  historical  education  which  should  openly  con- 
trovert  portions  of  the  traditional  theology  must  be  considered 
in  advance  as  impossible.     There  must  be  no  question  in  the 
matter  of  openly  refuting  anybody  ;  the  course  of  instruction 
must  simply  be  such  as  to  furnish  those  who  follow  it  with  a 
criterion  of  truth,  and    to  teach  them  to  make  use  of  it.     We 
believe  therefore  that  if  the  history  of  religions  is  ever  made  a 
part  of  the  regular  course  of  instruction,  it  will  deal  principally 
with  everything  but  the  history  of  the  Jews.     It  might  furnish 
elementary  instruction  on  the  moral  system  of   Confucius,  on 
the  moral   metaphysical  notions   involved    in   Indo-European 
religions,  on    the    antique    Egyptian     religion,  on  the    Greek 
myths,  and    finally  on  the  religious  and  moral  atmosphere  in 
which  Christianity  took  its  rise,  and  on  which  it  in  some  sort 
depended  and  throve.     It  would  be  well  even  to  make  scholars 
in  primary  schools  acquainted  with  the  names  of  some  of  the 
great  sages  in  the  history  of  the  world,  with  their  actual  or 
legendary  biography,  with  the  moral  maxims  which  are  attrib- 
uted   to    them.     What    harm    could    it  do    to    instruct    our 
children   in    the   aphorisms   uttered   by   Confucius,  Zoroaster, 
Buddha,  Socrates,  Plato,  and   Aristotle,  and   to  let  them  see 
something  of  what  humanity  really  believed  before  the  time 
of  Christ?     One  cannot  destroy  the  old   faith  openly  and  in  a 
minute,  but   one   may  do  much   to   undermine   and  justly   to 
'  By  M.  Maurice  Vernes  (approved  by  Littre,  and  later  by  M.  Paul  Bert). 


282      DISSOL  U  TIOX  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIE  TIES. 

undermine  it  by  showing  where  and  how  it  borrowed  much  of 
all  that  is  best  in  it — that  it  is  not  an  exception  in  the  history 
of  human  thought  nor  even,  in  all  respects,  unsurpassed  in  its 
kind. 

The  Church  possesses  two  means  of  educating  children  in 
its   dogmas,   and   only   two;    the   first   is   that  of   patristic   or 

irni„io„o„„>»  „*•  ecclesiastical  authority  :  '  The  fact  is  thus  and  such 

Helplessness   01  -' 

religion  in  the  face  because  I  say  SO  ' ;  the  second  is  the  testimony  of 
miracles.  These  two,  even  at  the  present  day,, 
constitute  the  whole  effective  contents  of  the  priests'  armoury. 
The  moment  they  step  outside  this  little  circle  of  ideas  they  lose 
their  power.  And  to  destroy  these  two  arguments  it  suffices  to 
show  :  1st,  that  other  men  have  said  something  different  from 
the  teachings  of  Christianity  ;  2d,  that  other  gods  than  Jehovah 
have  also  performed  miracles;  or,  in  other  words,  there  are 
no  miracles  whatever  that  have  been  scientifically  ascertained. 
A  number  of  French  schools  were  founded  in  Kabail,  and 
were  prospering,  when  by  degrees  they  were  abandoned.  In 
one  of  them,  which  was  the  last  deserted,  some  exercises  of  the 
pupils  were  discovered  :  they  dealt  with  a  story  about  Frede- 
gunde.  This  anecdote  illustrates  current  notions  on  instruc- 
tion in  classical  history:  History  means  facts,  and  facts  often 
monstrous  and  immoral  ;  not  content  with  teaching  them 
to  young  Frenchmen  we  export  them  to  Kabail  ;  but  we  do 
not  export  our  ideas,  nor  even  employ  them  at  home.  We 
should  have  done  better  to  teach  the  young  Algerians  what 
we  know  about  Mohammed  and  his  religion  and  about  Jesus 
and  the  other  prophets,  the  divinity  of  whose  inspiration 
Mohammed  himself  admitted.  The  slightest  traces  that  a 
really  rational  education  should  leave  in  a  half-savage  mind 
would  be  more  useful  than  a  heap  of  absurd  facts  perfectly 
remembered.  At  bottom  it  is  more  important  even  that  a 
French  child  should  know  something  of  Mohammed  or  Buddha 
than  of  Fredegunde.  Although  Mohammed  and  Buddha 
never  lived  on  French  soil,  their  influence  on  us  is  infinitely 
more  great  and  their  relation  to  us  infinitely  closer  than  that 
of  Chilperic  or  Lothaire. 

The  place  in  which  the  history  of  religions  really  belongs,  is 


RELIGION  AND    NON-RELIGION  AND    THE    CHILD.       283 

in  the  higher  education.     It  is  not  enough  to  have  introduced 
it  with  success  into  the  College  de  France,  and  quite  recently 
p,       -  to  have  secured  its  recognition  in  a  small  part  of 

ligion in  state         the  higher  studies  in   the    Ecole.     If  we  should 
e  ucation.  replace    our    faculties    of   theology    by   chairs   of 

religious  criticism  we  should  do  no  more  than  follow  the 
example  of  Holland.'  Mr.  Max  Miiller  introduced  the  science 
of  religions  into  the  University  of  Oxford  with  success. 
Similarly  in  Switzerland  at  the  organization  of  the  University 
of  Geneva,  in  1873,  there  was  created  in  the  faculty  of  letters  a 
chair  of  the  history  of  religions,  although  there  already  existed 
in  the  university  a  faculty  of  theology.  In  Germany  the 
history  of  religions  is  taught  independently,  notably  at  the 
University  of  Wurtzburg,  under  the  name  of  Comparative 
Symbolism.  Just  as  a  complete  course  of  instruction  in  phi- 
losophy should  include  the  principles  of  the  philosophy  of  law 
and  the  philosophy  of  history,  it  will  some  day  include  also 
tile  principles  of  the  philosophy  of  religion.  After  all,  even 
from  the  point  of  view  of  philosophy,  Buddha  and  Jesus 
possess  a  much  greater  importance  than  Anaximander  or 
Thales."" 

'  Some  years  ago,  as  is  well  known,  on  the  ist  of  October,  1877,  the  faculty  of 
theology  in  the  three  state  universities  of  Leyden,  Utrecht,  and  Groningen,  and 
in  tlie  Communal  University  of  Amsterdam,  was  declared  to  be  a  lay  faculty  and 
was  freed  from  all  association  and  connection  with  the  Church,  and  was  required  to 
give  purely  scientific  and  philosophic  instruction  on  the  history  of  religion,  without 
practical  discipline.  (See  M.  Steyn  Parve,  Organisation  de  Vinsirttctioti primaire, 
s^cpndaire  et  sup^rieure  dans  le  royaume  des  Fays-Bas,  Leyden,  1878,  and  M. 
Maurice  Vernes,  Melanges  de  critique  religieuse,  p.  305.) 

The  following  is  the  programme  of  this  faculty :  i.  General  theology  ;  2.  History 
of  doctrines  concerning  divinity  ;  3.  History  of  religions  in  general  ;  4.  History  of 
the  Israelite  religion;  5.  History  of  Christianity  ;  6.  Literature  of  the  Israelites, 
and  tlie  ancient  Christians;  7.  Old  and  New  Testament  exegesis  ;  8.  History  of 
the  dogmas  of  the  Christian  church  ;  g.   Philosophy  of  religion  ;   10.    Ethics. 

'^  As  M.  Vernes  has  remarked,  the  preparation  for  teaching  the  history  of  religions 
might  well  be  the  same  as  that  for  teaching  philosophy,  history,  and  letters.  It 
should  include  the  studies  in  tlie  upper  classes,  of  the  philosophical  section  of  the 
icole  norniale,  and  a  preparatory  course  in  the  divers  other  faculties  :  a  real  normal 
course.  In  this  course  the  professor  should  point  out  the  general  princijile  of  the 
history  of  religions  and  should  confine  himself  to  indicating  them  very  summarily 
in  the  case  of  the  religions  of  Greece  and  Rome,  to  which  a  general  literary  education 


284    nissoLUTioy  of  keligioa's  in  ex  is  ting  societies. 

It  has  been  said,  after  M.  Laboulaye,  that  a  professor  of 
the  history  of  religion  should  be  at  once  an  archseologist,  an 

epigraphist,  a  numismatist,  a  linguist,  an  anthro- 
Jtru'ctors'"^       pologist,     and     versed     in      Hindu,     Phcenician, 

Slavonic,  Germanic,  Celtic,  Etruscan,  Greek,  and 
Roman  antiquities;  he  should  be  nothing  less  than  a  Pico 
della  Mirandola.  At  that  rate  one  might  show  also  that 
neither  schools  nor  colleges  can  be  expected  to  include  a  course 
on  natural  history  or  on  the  political  history  of  some  seven  or 
eight  nations — nay,  even  that  it  is  impossible  to  teach  children 
to  read  :  the  art  of  reading  is  so  difificult  in  its  perfection  ! 
Really  is  it  necessary  that  the  historian  of  religion  should  be  a 
master  of  all  the  historical  sciences?  He  is  under  no  obliga- 
tion to  discover  new  materials,  he  has  simply  to  make  use  of 
those  which  philologists  and  epigraphists  have  put  at  his  dis- 
posal ;  such  materials  are  now  abundant  enough  and  well 
enough  ascertained  to  require  a  course  specially  devoted  to 
them.  There  is  no  need  for  the  instructor  to  master  such  and 
such  a  particular  division  of  the  history  of  religion  ;  he  is  simply 
required  to  furnish  students  in  our  universities,  in  the  course  of 
one  or  two  years,  with  a  general  view  of  the  development  of 
religious  ideas  in  history.  The  professor  will  no  doubt  encoun- 
ter certain  dif^culties  in  dealing  with  religious  questions 
because  of  the  amount  of  feeling  that  such  problems  always 
involve,  but  the  same  difficulty  is  met  with  in  every  course 
which  deals  with  contemporary  questions,  and  almost  every 
course  does  deal  with  them.  A  professor  of  history  has  to  deal 
with  contemporary  facts,  to  describe  the  successive  changes  in 
the  form  of  government  in  France,  etc.  A  professor  of  philos- 
ophy has  to  deal  with  questions  of  theodicy  and  morals  ;  and 
even  in  pure  psychology,  materialistic  and  deterministic 
theories  have  to  be  passed  upon  ;  even  a  mere  professor  of  rhet- 
oric is  obliged,  in  treating  of  literature  and  of  Voltaire  and  of 

will  have  given  the  pupil  access  ;  he  should  deal,  without  excessive  attention  to  detail, 
with  the  other  Indo-European  religions  (those  of  India,  Persia,  etc.),  with  the  reli- 
gions of  Egypt,  of  Assyria,  of  Phoenicia,  of  Islam  ;  and  should  spend  his  greatest 
efforts  on  the  criticism  of  Judaism  and  the  early  stages  of  Christianity,  on  the 
history  of  the  principal  Christian  dogmas  and  their  development. 


RELIGION  AXD   NON-RELIGION  AND    THE   CHILD.       285 

the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries,  to  touch  on  questions 
which  are  burning.  Similarly,  a  professor  in  the  law  school 
must  find  a  thousand  occasions  for  praising,  or  blaming,  or 
criticising  the  laws  of  the  State.  And  must  one,  because  of 
dangers  of  this  sort  which  are  met  with  at  every  step,  cease 
teaching  history,  philosophy,  and  law  ?  No,  and  we  do  not 
believe  that  one  should  be  debarred  from  teaching  religious 
history.  The  whole  question  is  one  of  fact  rather  than 
of  principle ;  it  should  be  the  master's  business  to  avoid 
digressions  beyond  the  limits  of  pure  science,  and  to  be  on 
his  guard  against  seeming  to  mean  something  more  than  he 
says,  and  masking  a  criticism  of  the  existing  order  of  things 
under  a  course  on  abstract  theory.' 

The  aim  of  this  impartial  course  of  instruction  should  be 

to  supply  each  religion  with  its  proper  historical  setting,  to 

Legitimate         show   how   it   was    born,  developed,   opposed  to 

object  of  religious    others;  it  should  be  described,  not  refuted.     The 

instruction,  1  •    ,.      ^       ^-  ri-.-i  ,••,       •  1 

bare  mtroduction  of  historical  continuity  into  the 

course  of  religious  thought  is  itself  a  considerable  step  in 
advance  ;  whatever  is  continuous  ceases  to  be  marvellous. 
Nobody  is  astonished  at  a  brook  which  gradually  becomes 
bigger  ;  our  ancestors  adored  great  rivers  of  whose  sources  they 
were  ignorant. 

///.     Education  at  Home. 

It  has  often  been  asked,  as  a  question  of  practical  conduct^ 
whether  the  head  of  a  household  ought  not  to  have  a  reliijion. 

'  Works  in  religious  criticism  would  naturally  find  their  place  in  the  school  and 
college  libraries.  They  might  be  supplemented  by  a  more  or  less  extensive  museum 
of  religious  curiosities,  beginning  with  the  fetiches  of  savage  tribes  and  extending 
down  to  the  present  day. 

To  the  mass  of  the  French  public  the  solid  results  already  achieved  by  an  inde- 
pendent criticism  of  the  Bible  constitute  a  terra  incognita  ;  they  must  be  dissemi- 
nated. M.  Lenormant's  effort  might  serve  as  an  example  for  other  efTorts  of  the 
same  kind.  In  order  to  make  it  apparent  at  a  glance  how  the  Pentateuch  has  been 
formed,  by  the  combination  and  fusion  of  the  earlier  sets  of  documents,  M. 
Lenornant  undertook  to  publish  a  translation  from  the  Hebrew,  in  which  he  dis- 
tinguishes the  extracts  from  the  respective  sets  of  documents  by  different  kinds  of 
type.  Thus  one  has  before  one  the  natural  explanation  of  the  way  in  which  all 
the  episodes  in  Genesis  are  presented  in  the  two  parallel  versions,  sometimes  juxta- 
posed, sometimes  mingled. 


286      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

at  least  if  not  for  himself,  for  his  wife  and  children,  and  if  his 

wife    is  religious  ought  he  to  abandon  the  education  of    his 

children  to  her? 

VVc  believe  it   is  the  duty  of  the  head  of  a  household  to 

rear  his  family  in  the  ideas  in  which  he  believes.     Whatever 

■p  *i,   I  J  *  •     solution   of  the  religious  problem   he  may  have 
Fathers  duty  in  .         . 

regard  to  religious  attained,  he  ought   to  hide  it   from  no  one,  and 
ins  rue  ion.  j^^  especial  not  from  his  family.     Moreover,  even 

if  he  should   wish  to  keep  his  opinions  secret,  he  would  b,e 
unable  to  do  so,  at  least  for  the  whole  of  his  life.     His  dis- 
simulation would  simply  result  in  such  an  association  in  the 
minds  of  his  children  between  moral  precepts  and  religious 
dogmas  that  the  chances  would  be  that  they  would  stand,  or 
rather  fall,  together.     Of  all  people  in  the  world  the  child  is 
precisely  the  one  who  is  likely  to  suffer  most  from  a  belief  that 
religion  and  morality  are  inseparably  bound  up  together.     Of 
all  human  beings  children  are  least  philosophical,  least  meta- 
physical, least  familiar  with  scientific  ideas,  and  therefore  of  all 
others  the  most  easily  biassed  once  for  all  by  the  inculcation 
of  false  or  doubtful  notions  presented  as  certain.     In  China,  at 
the  periodical  conferences,  certain  mandarins  dilate  upon  the 
following  theme  in  the  presence  of  the  more  notable  among 
>!  the  inhabitants:    "Do  your  duty  as  a  citizen  and  beware  of 
religion."     That  is  precisely  what  a   father  ought  to  say  again 
and  again  to  his  children.     It  is  a  good  principle  of  education 
to  take  it  for  granted  that  the  child  is  rational,  and  to  treat  it 
as  such,  in  order  ultimately  and  gradually  to  develop  the  spirit 
of  reason  in  it.     What  a  child  lacks  is  much  less  intensity  of 
attention  than  continuity.     Very  often  among  country  people, 
and  almost  always  among  inferior  races  (as  also  among  animals), 
the  young    are    more    wide-awake,  more  curious,  more   quick- 
minded  than  the  mature  men  ;    but  their  attention  must  be 
seized  in  transit ;  teaching  them  resembles  teaching  a  bird  on 
the  wing.     Their  schoolmaster  must  have  the  gifts  of  a  bird- 
fancier  ;  and  it  is  his  fault  much  oftener  than  the  child's  if  the 
latter  does  not  understand,  does  not  ask  questions,  is  inert  and 
incurious.     The  scientific  education  of  the  child  should  begin 
with  its  first  question  ;  truth  is  a  debt  that  one  owes  to  it,  and 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AND    THE    CHILD.       287 

truth  accessible  to  its  intelligence.  The  moment  a  child 
asks  a  question  out  of  its  own  head,  it  is  at  least  in  part  pre- 
pared to  understand  the  reply  ;  the  duty  of  the  person  inter- 
rogated is  to  reply,  as  fully  and  as  truly  as  he  believes  the 
child  capable  of  understanding,  and  if  he  leaves  gaps  he  must 
at  least  never  fill  them  with  lies.  It  is  so  easy  to  tell  the  child 
to  wait  until  it  is  bigger.  There  should  be  no  fear  of  pre- 
cociously developing  the  child's  reason  in  its  two  essential 
forms,  the  instinct  of  inquiry,  of  why  and  //^w,  and  the  instinct 
of  perception^of  logical  cogency  in  the  reply  to  the  "  why  "  and 
"  how."  One  need  not  be  afraid  that  the  child  will  fatigue  its 
brain  by  abstract  reasoning  ;  Pascals  are  rare.  The  danger 
does  not  lie  in  a  premature  development  of  the  reason,  which 
it  is  always  easy  moreover  to  check,  but  in  a  premature  de- 
velopment of  the  sensibility.  The  child  must  not  be  encour- 
aged to  feel  too  strongly.  To  subject  it  to  vain  fears  such  as 
those  of  hell  and  the  devil,  or  to  beatific  visions  and  mystic 
enthusiasms  such  as  young  girls  experience  at  the  time  of  the 
first  communion,  is  to  do  it  much  greater  harm  than  to  teach 
it  to  reason  justly  and  to  develop  in  it  a  certain  intelligent 
virility.  Races  become  effeminate  by  excess  of  sensibility, 
never  by  excess  of  scientific  and  philosophic  power. 

It  will  perhaps  be  said,  with  Rousseau,  that  if  the  child  is 
not  to  be  trammelled  with  religious  prejudice  it  may  at  least 
Impossible  to      "^^ait   for   reasoned    instruction    on    religion    until 
leave  the  child  in    it    has    attained    its    intellectual    maturity.      \\'e 
Ignorance,  reply  that  it  is  impossible  to  do  so  in  the  present 

state  of  society.  If  the  father  does  not  teach  his  child  it  will 
absorb  the  prejudices  of  those  it  associates  with,  and  to  dis- 
abuse it  of  them  afterward  will  demand  a  veritable  crisis,  which 
is  always  painful  and  often  the  cause  of  permanent  suffering. 
The  great  art  of  education  should  consist  precisely  in  avoiding 
crises  of  this  sort  in  the  orderl3'  growth  of  the  intellect. 
The  father  who  postpones  the  decisive  moment  will  be 
the  first  person  to  be  surprised  at  the  amount  of  pain 
he  will  be  obliged  to  subject  his  child  to  in  order  to  root 
up  the  error  which  he  has  placidly  permitted  to  grow  under 
his  very  eyes. 


288     DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

M.  Littrc  lias  given  an  account  of  a  case  of  conscience  of 
this  kind  ;  after  having  voluntarily  held  aloof  from  the  religious 
education  of  his  daughter  till  she  had  reached 
earW  ^'^^^  ^^"^  years  of  discretion,  he  found  her  at  last  so  sin- 
cerely convinced,  so  completely  fashioned  by 
religion  for  religion,  that  he  recoiled  before  so  thorough-going 
a  change ;  like  a  surgeon  whose  hand  should  tremble  at  the 
tliought  of  an  operation  upon  a  body  that  love  had  rendered 
sacred  to  him  ;  like  an  oculist  who  should  feel  that  light  was 
not  worth  the  pain  that  he  would  have  to  inflict  on  eyes  that 
were  dear  to  him.  The  intellectual  operator  has  not  at  his 
command  even  the  resource  of  chloroform  ;  he  must  practise 
his  surgery  upon  a  subject  who  is  fully  conscious  and  even 
excited  by  attention  and  reflection.  Prevention  is  better  than 
expectant  treatment,  which  allows  the  disease  to  develop  in 
the  hopes  of  curing  it  afterward.  The  competent  educator, 
like  the  competent  physician,  may  be  known  by  his  ability  in 
avoiding  the  necessity  of  operations.  It  \s  a  mistake  to  allow 
a  child  to  grow  up  incomplete  belief  in  religious  legends,  with 
the  intention  of  undeceiving  it  afterward.  It  will  be  un- 
deceived not  without  regret  nor  without  effort.  And  often 
the  effort  put  forth  will  itself  be  too  great,  will  overshoot 
itself,  and  from  excess  of  faith  the  child  will  pass  at  a  bound 
to  sceptical  indifference  and  will  suffer  for  it.  Treasures  in 
heaven  are  treasures  in  fiat  money  ;  the  disappointment  which 
must  some  day  come,  when  one  learns  the  truth,  will  be  bitter. 
It  would  be  better  always  to  have  known  that  one  was 
poor.  A  child  may  early  be  accustomed  to  the  conception  of 
the  infinite;  it  makes  up  its  account  with  it  as  with  the  notion 
of  the  antipodes,  or  of  the  absence  of  an  absolute  up  and  down 
in  the  universe.  The  first  sensation  one  experiences  when  one 
learns  that  the  earth  is  spherical  is  of  terror,  a  fear  of  the  void, 
of  tumbling  off  into  the  abyss  of  open  space.  The  same  naive 
fear  lies  at  the  bottom  of  the  religious  sentiment  in  certain 
minds,  and  is  due  to  factitious  associations  of  ideas  which  are  a 
matter  of  education  wholly.  A  fish  born  in  an  aquarium  be- 
comes accustomed  to  its  habitat,  as  the  ancients  were  accus- 
tomed to  the  inverted  crystal  ball  of  the  heavens;  it  would  be 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AND    THE    CHILD.        289 

lost  in  the  ocean.  Birds  reared  in  the  cage  often  die  if  they  are 
abruptly  given  their  liberty.  A  period  of  transition  is  always 
necessary,  one  needs  time  to  become  accustomed  to  intellectual 
expanses  as  well  as  to  expanses  of  air  and  water.  If  mankind  is 
to  live  without  religion  it  must  receive  a  non-religious  education, 
and  this  education  will  spare  it  a  great  deal  of  the  suffering  that 
those  who  have  been  educated  in  the  faith  and  have  subse- 
quently broken  away  by  their  own  efforts  have  undergone. 
The  wood-cutter's  child  experiences  no  sentiment  of  fear  in  the 
solitude  and  obscurity  of  the  forest,  in  the  arched  lanes  and 
alleys,  among  the  trees  among  w'hich  it  was  born.  A  town- 
born  child  would  feel  lost  in  such  a  place  and  would  begin  to 
cry.  The  world  of  science,  with  its  shadowy  labyrinths  and 
limitless  extent  and  its  numberless  obstacles  which  must  be 
removed  one  at  a  time,  is  such  a  forest ;  the  child  who  is  born 
in  it  will  not  be  frightened,  will  live  in  it  always  happily. 

Of  all  the  problems  of  education  which  lie  on  the  borders  of 

religious  metaphysics  the  most  interesting  is,  unquestionably, 

what  to  say  to  the  child  about  death  and  human 

Wtat  to  say  to       ,        .  ,^r.  ,,  .  , .  , 

the  child  about       destmy.      When    these    questions   are    discussed 

death,   M,  Louis     before  him,  is  a  rational  and  truly  philosophical 

Menard's  position.  -  .^  , 

method  to  be  employed  :    Is  he  to  be  intormec 

dogmatically,  or  is  it  a  matter  of  indifference  what  is  said  to 
him  ?  This  problem  has  been  discussed,  in  the  "  Critique 
philosophique,"  by  M.  Louis  Menard,  who  deals  with  the  hypo- 
thetical case  of  a  child  that  has  lost  its  mother  and  is  cross- 
questioning  its  father.  That  is  ingenious,  but  it  is  a  specious 
way  of  raising  the  problem.  When  a  young  child  loses  its 
mother  we  regard  it  as  the  first  duty  of  the  father  to  console  and 
spare  its  delicate  organism  the  strain  of  all  strong  emotions. 
The  question  is  one  of  moral  hygiene,  in  which  philosophy  and 
religion  are  not  concerned,  in  which  the  age  and  temperament  of 
the  child  are  the  sole  things  to  consider.  Truth  is  not  equally 
valuable  at  all  periods  of  life  ;  one  does  not  tell  a  man  abruptly 
that  his  wife  has  just  died.  The  most  convinced  materialist 
w  ill  hesitate  to  announce  to  a  nervous  child  that  it  will  never 
see  its  mother  again.     But  the  materialist  in  question  would 


290     DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

always  do  wrong  to  put  forth  a  categorical  affirmation  in  a 
case  in  which  there  exists  at  best  nothing  more  than  proba- 
bilities ;  the  most  dangerous  method  of  deception  is  to  present 
as  a  recognized  certainty  what  is  really  nothing  of  the  kind. 
In  any  event  there  is  one  form  of  immortality,  that  of  memory, 
and  that  species  of  immortality  we  may  ourselves  secure  by 
implanting  it  in  the  mind  of  the  child.'  The  father  ought 
repeatedly  to  talk  to  the  orphan  child  of  the  dead  mother. 
He  can  create  a  recollection  in  the  child  as  vivid  and  as  detailed 
as  his  own  ;  whether  the  child  behaves  well  or  ill  he  can  always 
say,  "  If  your  mother  were  but  here  !  "  The  child  will  thus  be- 
come accustomed  to  find  a  recompense  or  a  punishment  in  its 
mother's  approbation  or  disapprobation." 

To  raise  the  problem  more  fairly,  let  us  suppose  the  cir- 
cumstances somewhat  less  tragic  than  those  which  M.  Menard 
Should  talk  ^^^^  chosen,  and  let  us  ask  how,  in  general,  the 
with  child  as  with  child  must  be  spoken  to  about  death.  When  the 
a  grown  person.  q\^\\^  jg  capable  of  following  a  more  or  less  com- 
plex bit  of  exposition,  toward  the  age  of  ten  or  twelve  for 
example,  I  confess  that  I  see  no  reason  why  its  questions 
should  not  be  answered  exactly  as  if  they  were  those  of  a 
grown  person.  At  that  age  it  will  no  longer  believe  in  fairies, 
it  will  no  longer  need  to  believe  in  legends,  not  even  in  those 
of  Christianity.  The  scientific  and  philosophic  spirit  will  have 
begun  to  develop  and  must  not  be  either  checked  or  dis- 
torted. If  its  intelligence  leads  it  toward  philosophical  prob- 
lems, so  much  the  better ;  one  must  meet  its  need  as  simply 
as  if  the  problems  in  question  were  historical.  I  have  seen  a 
child  much  tormented  by  a  desire  to  know  whether  such  and 
such  an  historical  personage  died  a  natural  death  or  was 
poisoned.     The  child  was  told  that  the  thing  was  doubtful,  but 


'  "  Memory  is  no  doubt  an  affliction  for  the  grown  man  much  more  than  for  the 
child,  but  it  is  also  a  consolation.  Cultivation  of  one's  memories  supplies  powerful 
means  of  moral  education  for  all  ages,  and  for  nations  as  well  as  for  individuals. 
It  was  quite  to  be  expected  that  we  should  find  an  ancestor  worship  in  tlie  early 
history  of  every  people."  (Felix  Henneguy,  Critique  philosophiqtie,  8th  year, 
vol.  ii.  p.  218.) 

2  Ibid. 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AND    THE    CHILD.       291 

that  the  probabihty  was  so  and  so.  The  same  method  should 
be  pursued  in  reference  to  more  important  problems. 

But  how,  it  may  be  asked,  is  one  to  form  replies,  that  the 

child  can   understand,  to    questions  which   relate    to  the   life 

„   ,.„    ,,   ,      beyond    the    p;rave  ?     Is    not    the  sole   language 

No  difficnlty  in  -^  °  00 

making  the  child  that  it  understands  that  of  Christianity,  which 
nnderstand.  ^^^j^    ^^jj.j^    ^^^  raised    to  heaven,    with   happy 

souls  seated  among  the  angels  and  the  seraphim,  etc?  We 
reply  that  people  in  general  seem  to  have  a  strange  conception 
of  the  child's  intelligence  ;  they  expect  it  to  understand  the 
most  refined  subtleties  of  grammar,  the  most  unexpected 
turns  and  shifts  of  theology,  and  are  afraid  to  say  a  word  to  it 
of  philosophy.  A  little  girl  of  twelve  years,  of  my  acquaint- 
ance, replied  with  much  ingenuity  to  this  unexpected  ques- 
tion :  What  is  the  difference  between  a  perfect  and  an 
imperfect  Christian  ?  It  was  evident  that  she  would  not  have 
experienced  greater  difficulty  in  replying  to  a  metaphysical 
question.  I  recollect  having  myself  followed,  at  the  age  of 
eight,  a  discussion  on  the  immortality  of  the  soul ;  nay,  I  even 
pronounced  an  interior  judgment  in  favour  of  him  who  was 
maintaining  the  cause  of  immortality.  Our  system  of  educa- 
tion is  full  of  contradictions,  which  consist  at  once  in  mechani- 
cally burdening  the  child's  memory  with  things  it  cannot 
understand,  and  in  depriving  its  intelligence  of  subjects  in 
which  it  might  take  an  interest.  "  Rut,"  M.  Menard  will 
object,  "  a  child  must  not  be  put  into  a  position  of  being  able 
to  oppose  its  father's  belief  to  that  of  its  mother  or  of  its  grand- 
mother." Why  not  ?  It  happens,  necessarily,  every  day. 
There  are,  on  all  subjects,  incessantly  going  on  in  the  bosom 
of  the  family  a  series  of  discussions,  of  small  disagreements 
which  in  nowise  fundamentally  disturb  the  harmony  of  the 
household  ;  why  should  it  be  otherwise  when  more  important 
and  uncertain  questions  simply  are  involved?  "  But  the  child 
will  lose  respect  for  its  parents."  It  is  certainly  better  that 
it  should  lose  respect  for  them  than  that  it  should  believe 
everything  they  say,  even  when  they  deceive  it.  Happily, 
respect  for  one's  parents  is  not  at  all  the  same  thjng  as  belief 
in  their  infallibility.     Children   early  make   use   of  liberty  of 


292      DISSOLUTIOX  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

judgment,  they  may  early  l)e  taught  to  sift  out  the  truth  from 
a  mass  of  more  or  less  contradictory  afifirmations,  their  judg- 
ment may  be  developed  instead  of  being  supplied,  as  is  at 
present  attempted,  ready  and  completely  made.  The  essen- 
tial thing  is  to  avoid  rousing  their  passions  and  converting 
them  into  fanatics.  The  child  needs  an  atmosphere  of  calm 
for  the  harmonious  development  of  its  faculties  ;  it  is  a  delicate 
plant  that  must  not  be  too  soon  exposed  to  wind  and  weather; 
but  it  does  not  follow  that  it  should  be  kept  in  the  obscurity. 
or  half  light  of  religious  legend.  The  sole  means  of  spar- 
ing the  child  the  trouble  of  passion  and  fanaticism  is  to  place 
it  outside  of  all  religious  communion  and  to  habituate  it  to 
examine  things  coolly,  philosophically ;  to  take  problems  of 
religion  for  what  they  are  ;  that  is  to  say,  for  problems  simply, 
with  ambiguous  solutions."  Nothing  serves  better  to  awake 
the  intellectual  spontaneity  of  the  child  than  to  say  to  it : 
This  is  what  I  believe,  and  these  are  my  reasons  for  believing 
it ;  I  may  be  wrong.  Your  mother,  or  such  and  such  a  person, 
believes  something  else  for  certain  other  reasons,  right  or 
wrong.  The  child  acquires  thus  a  rare  quality,  that  of  toler- 
ance ;  its  respect  for  its  parents  attaches  to  the  diverse 
doctrines  that  it  sees  them  professing;  it  learns,  in  its  earliest 
years,  that  every  sincere  and  reasoned  belief  is  in  the  highest 
degree  respectable.  I  am  intimately  acquainted  with  a  child 
that  has  been  reared  in  this  way,  and  it  has  never  had  any 
occasion  for  anything  but  satisfaction  with  the  education  it 
has  received.  It  has  never  been  presented  on  the  subject  of 
human  destiny,  or  the  destiny  of  the  world,  with  any  opinion 
in  the  nature  of  an  article  of  faith  ;  instead  of  religious  cer- 
titudes  it   has  heard    only   of   metaphysical   possibilities   and 

'  Among  the  greatest  causes  of  difficulty  witli  a  child,  let  us  note  the  following  : 
the  father  is  apt  to  be  a  free-thinker,  the  mother  a  Catholic.  It  hears  every  day  at 
Church  that  those  who  do  not  practise  their  religious  duties  will  go  to  hell  :  the 
child  therefore  reasons  that  if  its  father  dies  it  will  never  see  him  again,  unless  it 
goes  to  hell  with  him,  and  then  it  will  never  see  its  mother  again.  A  full  and 
complete  belief  in  annihilation  would  be  less  painful  and  less  annoying  than  this 
belief  in  eternal  damnation.  Add  that  in  this  respect  many  Protestant  clergymen, 
in  especial  in  England  and  in  the  United  States,  are  not  less  intolerant  than 
Catholic  priests. 


RELIGION  AND   NON-RELIGION  AND    THE   CHILD.       293 

probabilities.  Toward  the  age  of  thirteen  and  a  half  the 
problem  of  the  destiny  of  mankind  was  abruptly  suggested  to 
it ;  the  death  of  a  very  dear  aged  relative  caused  it  to  do  more 
thinking  than  is  customary  at  that  age,  but  its  philosophic 
beliefs  proved  themselves  suf^cient.  They  still  are  sufificient, 
although  the  child  in  question  has  been  obliged  several  times 
to  face  the  possibility,  and  the  immediate  possibility,  of  its 
own  death.  I  cite  the  example  as  an  experiment  which  bears 
on  the  question  under  discussion. 

How  then  should  death  be  spoken  of  to  a  child?  I  reply 
confidently,  as  one  would  speak  of  it  to  a  grown  person, 
allowing  for  the  difference  between  abstract  and 
concrete  language.  I  naturally  suppose  the  child 
to  be  semi-rational,  more  than  ten  years  old,  and  capable  of 
thinking  of  something  else  than  its  top  or  its  doll.  I  believe 
it  should  then  be  talked  with  openly,  and  told  what  we  our- 
selves think  most  probable  on  these  terrible  questions.  The 
free-thinker  who  leans  toward  naturalistic  doctrines  will  say  to 
his  son  or  his  daughter  that  he  believes  death  to  be  a  resolu- 
tion of  the  person  into  its  constituent  elements,  a  return  to 
a  blind  material  existence,  a  fresh  beginning  in  the  perpetual 
round  of  evolution  ;  that  all  that  we  leave  behind  is  the  good 
that  we  have  done  and  that  we  live  in  humanity  by  our  good 
actions  and  our  good  thoughts,  and  that  immortality  is  pro- 
ductivity for  the  best  interests  of  humanity.  The  spiritualist 
will  say  that,  owing  to  the  distinction  between  the  soul  and 
the  body,  death  is  simply  a  deliverance.  The  pantheist  or  the 
monist  will  repeat  the  formula  consecrated  by  the  use  of 
three  thousand  years:  Tat  tvani  asi — Thou  art  that;  and  the 
modern  child  \\\\\  recognize,  as  the  young  Brahman  does,  that 
beneath  the  surface  of  things  there  lies  a  mysterious  unity  into 
which  the  individual  may  fade.  Finally  the  Kantian  will  en- 
deavour to  make  his  child  understand  that  the  conception  of 
duty  involves  something  anterior  and  superior  to  the  present 
life  ;  that  to  be  aware  of  the  moral  law  is  to  be  conscious  of 
immortality.  Everyone  will  say  what  he  believes,  and  take 
care  not  to  pretend  that  his  opinion  is  the  absolute  truth. 
The  child,  thus  treated  like  a  human  being,  will  early  learn  to 


294      DISSOLUTION^  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

make  up  its  own  mind,  to  provide  itself  with  a  creed  without 
having  received  it  from  any  traditional  religion  or  any  immu- 
table doctrine;  it  will  learn  that  a  really  sacred  belief  is  one 
which  is  reflective  and  reasoned  and  seemingly  personal ;  and 
if  at  times,  as  it  advances  in  age,  it  experiences  a  greater  or  less 
anxiety  about  the  unknown,  so  much  the  better;  such  an 
anxiety,  when  the  senses  are  not  involved  and  thought  alone 
is  concerned,  is  in  no  sense  dangerous.  The  child  who  experi- 
ences it  will  be  of  the  stuff  out  of  which  philosophers  and  . 
sages  are  made. 


CHAPTER   VI. 

RELIGION  AND   NON-RELIGION   AMONG   WOMEN. 

• 

Are  women  inherently  predisposed  toward  religion  and  even 
toward  superstition  ?— The  nature  of  feminine  intelligence— Pre- 
dominance of  the  imagination— Credulity— Conservatism— Fem- 
inine sensibility— Predominance  of  sentiment— Tendency  to 
mysticism — Is  the  moral  sentiment  among  women  based  upon 
religion  ?— Influence  of  religion  and  of  non-religion  upon  mod- 
esty and  love— Origin  of  modesty— Love  and  perpetual  virginity 
— M.  Kenan's  paradoxes  on  the  subject  of  monastic  vows— How 
woman's  natural  proclivities  may  be  turned  to  account  by  free- 
thought — Influence  exercised  by  the  wife's  faith  over  the  hus- 
band—Instance of  a  conversion  to  free-thought. 

Among  free-thinkers  themselves  there  are  a  certain  number 
who  beHeve  that  women  are  by  the  very  nature  of  their  minds 
devoted  to  superstition  and  to  myth.  Is  the  incapacity  of  the 
female  mind  for  philosophy  more  demonstrable  than  that  of  the 
child's  mind  to  which  it  has  so  frequently  been  compared  ? 

We  are  not  obliged  to  decide  the  question  whether  women's 

mental  powers  are  or  are  not  inferior  to  those  of  men.'     We 

are  obliged  to  consider  only  whether  the  limits 

Woman's  atten-   ^f   female  intelligence  are  so  tightly  drawn  that 
tion  to  details.  ^  .   .  ^  ^         .       . 

religion,  and  even  superstition,  are  for  it  inevi- 
table. Those  who  maintain  that  women  are  in  some  sort 
condemned  to  error  argue  from  certain  essential  elements  in 

'  As  a  general  rule,  Darwin  says,  men  go  farther  than  women,  whether  the  matter 
he  one  of  profound  meditation,  of  reason,  or  imagination,  or  simply  of  the  use  of 
the  senses  or  even  of  the  hands.  According  to  certain  statistical  investigations  it 
appears  that  the  modern  female  hrain  has  remained  almost  stationary,  while  the 
male  brain  has  developed  notably.  The  brain  of  a  Parisian  woman  is  no  larger 
than  that  of  a  Chinese  woman,  and  the  Parisian  woman  labours  under  the  additional 
disadvantage  of  possessing  a  larger  foot. 

Admitting  these  facts  one  may  still  refuse  to  infer  from  them  the  existence  of  a 
congenital  incapacity,  for  the  way  in  which  women  have  always  been  treated  by 
men  and  the  education  that  they  have  received  may  well  have  left  results  which  have 

295 


296      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

her  character;  let  us  examine  accordingly  the  peculiarity  of 
her  intelligence  and  of  her  sensibility.  The  female  mind,  it 
has  been  said,  is  less  abstract  than  that  of  the  male ;  women 
are  more  impressionable  on  the  side  of  the  senses  and  of  the 
imagination,  are  more  readily  appealed  to  by  what  is  beautiful 
and  striking  and  coloured  :  thence  arises  their  need  for  myths, 
for  symbols,  for  a  cult,  for  rites  that  speak  to  the  eye.  We  re- 
ply that  this  need  is  not  absolute :  are  not  Protestant  women 
content  with  a  cult  which  does  not  appeal  to  the  senses?  . 
And  in  any  event,  an  imaginative  spirit  is  not  necessarily 
superstitious.  Superstition  is  a  matter  of  education,  not  of 
nature ;  there  is  a  certain  maturity  of  mind  which  lends  na 
encouragement  to  superstition.  I  have  known  a  number  of 
women  who  did  not  possess  one  superstition  among  them  and 
were  incapable  of  acquiring  one;  there  was  no  distinction  in 
this  respect  to  be  observed  between  their  intelligence  and 
that  of  a  man  ;  the  conception  of  the  world  as  an  orderly  suc- 
cession of  phenomena,  once  really  accepted  by  the  human 
mind,  maintains  itself  by  its  own  power,  without  aid  from 
without,  as  the  fact  in  the  long  run  always  does. 

become  hereditary.  The  education  of  women  has  in  all  times  been  less  strenuous 
than  that  of  men  ;  and  their  mind,  perhaps  naturally  less  scientific,  has  never  been 
developed  by  direct  contact  with  the  external  world.  In  the  Orient  and  in  Greece, 
among  the  nations  from  whom  we  derive  our  civilization,  women  (at  least  in  families 
in  easy  circumstances)  were  always  restricted  to  a  subordinate  role,  confined  \.o 
woman's  quarters,  or  withdrawn  from  all  direct  contact  with  the  real  world. 
Thence  arose  a  sort  of  tradition  of  ignorance  and  intellectual  abasement  which  has 
been  handed  down  to  us.  There  is  nothing  like  the  brain  of  a  young  girl  reared 
at  home  for  gathering  to  itself  completely,  and  without  loss,  the  whole  residue  of 
middle-class  silliness,  of  naive  and  self-satisfied  prejudice,  of  strutting  ignorance 
that  does  not  see  itself  as  others  see  it,  of  superstition  transformed  into  a  rule 
of  conduct.  But  change  the  education  and  you  will  in  a  great  measure  change  these 
results.  Even  according  to  Darwin's  own  theory,  education  and  heredity  can  in 
the  long  run  undo  anything  that  they  have  done.  Even  if  there  should  remain  a 
certain  balance  of  intelligence  in  favor  of  the  male,  even  if  the  female  should 
prove  to  be  in  the  end,  as  Darwin  says,  incapable  of  pushing  invention  as  far  in 
advance  as  man,  it  would  not  follow  that  her  heart  and  intelligence  should  be 
filled  with  another  order  of  ideas  and  sentiments  than  those  which  are  beneficial  to- 
men.  It  is  one  thing  to  invent  and  to  widen  the  domain  of  science,  and  another 
thing  to  assimilate  the  knowledge  already  acquired  ;  it  is  one  thing  to  widen  the 
intellectual  horizon,  and  another  thing  to  adapt  one's  eyes  and  heart  to  this  more 
open  habitat. 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AMONG    WOMEN.         297 

A  second  trait  of  female  intelligence,  which  has  also  been 
made  use  of,  is  its  credulity— by  which  religion  has  so  largely 
profited.  Women  are  more  credulous  than  men, 
Female credu-  j^^  ^j^j^  sense  :  they  possess  a  certain  confidence 
in  men,  whom  they  recognize  as  stronger  and 
more  widely  experienced  than  themselves ;  they  willingly 
believe  whatever  grave  men,  whom  they  are  accustomed  to 
venerate,  men  like  priests,  assert.  Their  credulity  is  thus  in  a 
great  part  a  mere  form  of  their  natural  need  to  lean  on  some 
member  of  the  opposite  sex.  Conceive  a  religion  originated  and 
administered  solely  by  women  ;  it  would  be  looked  upon  with 
great  distrust  by  women,  in  general.  The  day  men  cease  to  be- 
lieve, female  credulity — in  especial  that  of  the  average  woman, 
who  is  accustomed  to  judge  with  the  eyes  and  intelligence  of 
someone  else — will  be  profoundly  affected.  I  once  asked  a 
maid  who  had  remained  thirty  years  in  the  same  house  what 
were  her  beliefs.  "  Those  of  my  master,"  she  replied  ;  her 
master  was  an  atheist.  The  same  question  was  put  to  the 
wife  of  a  member  of  the  Institute.  She  replied:  "I  was  a 
Catholic  until  I  was  married.  After  I  was  married  I  began  to 
appreciate  the  superiority  of  my  husband's  mind,  I  saw  that  he 
did  not  believe  in  religion,  and  I  ceased  to  believe  in  it  entirely 
myself." 

A  third  trait  of  the  feminine  character  is  its  conservativeness, 

its    friendliness    to    tradition,    its    indisposition    to    initiative. 

Respect  for  power  and  authority,  Spencer  says, 

Female  conser-     predominates    in    women,  influences    their    ideas 
vatism,  1  ... 

and  sentiments  in  regard  to  all  institutions,  and 

tends  to  strengthen  political  and  ecclesiastical  governments. 
For  the  same  reason  women  are  particularly  inclined  to  put 
faith  in  whatever  is  imposing;  doubt,  criticism,  a  disposition 
to  question  whatever  is  established  is  rare  among  them, 
Mr.  Spencer  thinks.  Women  certainly  do  possess  a  more 
conservative  disposition  than  men  in  religion  and  in  politics  ; 
it  has  been  so  found  in  England  where  women  vote  on  muni- 
cipal questions,  and  in  our  judgment  the  role  that  woman 
should  play  in  this  world  is  precisely  that  of  conservatism  ;  as 
a  young  girl,  she  must  guard  her  person  as  a  treasure,  must  be 


298      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

always  suspicious  of  she  knows  not  precisely  what ;  then  as  a 
wife  she  must  watch  over  her  child,  her  house,  her  husband  ; 
must  preserve,  retain,  defend,  embrace  somebody  or  something. 
Is  it  a  thing  to  be  complained  of  ?  Is  it  not  to  this  instinct 
that  we  owe  our  life,  and  if  difference  in  sex,  or  sexual 
functions,  involves  grave  differences  in  character,  must  we  con- 
clude from  this  fact  that  women  possess  an  irremediable  civil 
and  religious  incapacity?  No  ;  conservatism  may  be  of  service 
in  the  ranks  of  truth  as  in  the  ranks  of  error  ;  all  depends  on 
what  is  given  to  conserve.  If  women  are  more  philosophically 
and  scientifically  educated,  their  conservatism  may  do  good 
service. 

A  final  trait  of  the  feminine  mind,  very  like  the  preceding, 

is  that  women  are  more  given  to  an  absorption  in  detail,  are 

less  courageous,  are  more  capable  of  dealing  with 

Female  timidity,  .,,.,,  ,  ^ 

particular    details    than    with    general    ideas  and 

things  as  a  whole,  and  are  more  inclined  to  narrow  and  literal 
interpretations  than  men.  If  a  woman,  for  example,  is  intrusted 
with  any  administrative  office  she  will  execute  every  rule  to 
the  letter  with  an  exaggerated  conscientiousness  and  a  naive 
anxiety.  The  conclusion  is  that  women  will  always  lend  com- 
fort to  literal  religions  and  to  superstitious  practices.  In  our 
opinion  this  penchant  for  minutiae  and  for  scrupulousness 
which  is  so  frequently  observed  among  women  may  become, 
on  the  contrary,  an  important  factor  of  incredulity  when 
women  are  sufficiently  instructed  to  perceive  at  first  hand  the 
innumerable  contradictions  and  ambiguities  of  the  texts  they 
are  dealing  with.  An  enlightened  scruple  is  a  keener  instru- 
ment of  doubt  than  of  faith. 

We  confess  we  do  not  yet  see  that  tlie  differences,  native  or 
acquired,  between  the  male  and  the  female  brain  suffice  to  con- 
stitute women  a  sort  of  inferior  caste,  devoted  by  their  birth 
to  religion  and  the  service  of  myth,  while  men  are  reserved 
for  science  and  philosophy. 

Let  me  now  examine  the  more  profound  reasons  based  on 
the  nature  of  women's  sentimental  proclivities.  In  general,  it 
is  said  that  women  are  dominated  not  by  reason  but  by  senti- 
timent.     They  respond  quickly  to  a  call  made  in  the  name 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AMONG   W&M^^f^^'^2gg 


of  pity  or  of  charity,  and  not  so  quickly  to  one  made  in  the 

name  of  equity.     But  is  sentiment  the  exclusive  possession  of 

T      ,.      ^        relictions?     And  are  there  not  also  men  of  senti- 
Is  sentiment  a  ° 

badge  of  servitude   ment  as  well  as  men  of  thought?     And  are  the 
to  error  ^^^j.  ^^^  ^j^^^.  ^^^^-Qmii;  condemned  to  a  life  of  error 

while  the  second  live  in  the  presence  of  the  truth  ? 

But  it  is  insisted  that  in  women  sentiment  naturally  tends 

toward   mysticism.       Among   the   Greeks,    Spencer  says,   the 

women   were   more    accessible   than    the   men   to 

omen  an  religious  excitation.'      It  may  be  replied  that  the 

mysticism.  *>  j  r 

greatest  mystics  have  not  been  women.  St. 
Theresas  have  been  much  less  numerous  than  men  like  Plotinus 
(it  was  Plotinus  who  first  gave  the  word  cKo-rao-is  its  current 
sense),  Porphyry,  lamblicus,  Dionysius  the  Areopagite,  St. 
13onaventure,  Gerson,  Richard  de  Saint  Victor,  Eckhart,Tauler, 
Swedenborg.  Mysticism  develops  in  proportion  to  the  restric- 
tion of  the  individual's  activity.  Women's  life,  which  is  less 
active  than  that  of  men,  allows  more  space  for  the  development 
of  mystic  impulses  and  exercises  of  piety.  But  activity  cures 
the  diseases  of  contemplation,  in  especial  of  vain  and  empty  con- 
templation in  which  only  average  and  ignorant  minds  can  take 
delight.  Woman's  religious  activity  will  diminish  in  propor- 
tion as  a  wider  field  of  activity  is  opened  up  to  her,  and  in 
proportion  as  an  intellectual  and  aesthetic  education  is  supplied 
to  her  and  she  becomes  interested  in  all  the  human  questions 
and  realities  of  this  world.  It  has  been  desired  even  to  render 
political  life  accessible  to  woman,  to  restore  to  her  the  rights 
which  have  hitherto  been  denied  her.  ]\I.  Secretan  has 
recently  advocated   this  measure,   which  was   formerly  advo- 

'  Sir  Rutherford  Alcnck  says  also,  that  in  Japan  it  is  very  rare  to  see  any  otlier 
worshippers  in  the  temples  than  women  and  children  ;  the  men  are  always  extremely 
few  in  number  and  belong  to  the  lower  classes.  At  least  five-sixths  and  often  nine- 
tenths  of  the  pilgrims  who  come  to  the  temple  of  Juggernaut  are  women.  Among  the 
Sikhs  the  women  are  said  to  believe  in  more  gods  than  the  men.  These  examples, 
borrowed  as  they  are  from  different  races,  and  at  different  epochs,  show  sufficiently, 
in  Spencer's  opinion,  that,  when  we  find  an  analogous  state  of  things  in  Catholic 
countries,  and  even  in  some  measure  in  England,  we  are  not  to  attribute  it  solely 
to  the  education  of  women  ;  the  cause,  he  thinks,  is  deeper,  lies  in  their  nature. 
(See  Spencer's  Study  of  Sociology.) 


300      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

cated  by  John  Stuart  Mill.  To  do  so  at  the  present  moment 
would  be  to  hand  over  politics  directly  to  the  priesthood,  who 
at  present  control  women.  But  when  by  gradual  degrees 
women's  religious  emancipation  shall  have  been  completed,  it 
is  possible  that  a  certain  political  emancipation  may  be  the 
natural  consequence  of  it.  Her  civil  emancipation  in  any 
event  is  only  a  matter  of  time.  The  equality  of  women  before 
the  law  is  a  necessary  consequence  of  democratic  ideas.  When 
they  shall  be  forced  thus  to  occupy  themselves  more  actively 
in  the  affairs  of  this  world  the  new  employment  of  their  energy 
will  protect  them  more  and  more  from  mystical  tendencies. 

If  an  opportunity  be  given  them  to  influence  society  they 
will  no  doubt  exercise  it  philanthropically.  Well,  pity  is  one 
of  the  most  powerful  derivatives  of  mysticism.  Even  among 
religious  orders  it  has  been  remarked  how  much  less  exalted 
the  devotion  of  the  members  of  the  philanthropic  orders  is 
than  of  those  who  restrict  themselves  to  sterile  meditation  in 
the  cloister. 

If  mysticism  is  no  more  truly  indispensable  to  women  than 

to  men,  can  it  be  maintained  that  their  moral  sentiment  is 

incapable  of  subsistence  apart  from  some  religion  ? 

ema  e  mora  j  ^vQi^eji'g  moral  power  less  than  that  of  men, 
sentiment.  ^  ' 

and  is  it  only  in  religion  that  they  can  find  the 
additional  increment  of  strength  of  which  they  are  in  need? 
Resistance  to  physical  or  moral  pain  supplies  a  sufficiently 
exact  measure  of  power.  Well,  women  show  in  maternity, 
with  all  its  consequences,  in  pregnancy,  in  childbirth,  in  nurs- 
ing, accompanied  as  it  is  by  continual  watchfulness  and  care, 
a  patience  of  physical  pain  which  is  perhaps  greater  than  any- 
thing that  the  average  man  is  capable  of.  Just  so  in  respect  to 
patience  of  moral  pain  :  women  may  suffer  much  from  poverty, 
and  sadness  follows  the  flying  needle,  but  love  and  pity  are  the 
great  sources  of  restraint.  As  the  sphere  of  her  intelligence 
widens,  a  large  field  will  be  supplied  for  the  exercise  of 
women's  power  of  love  which  is  so  highly  developed.  The 
genuine  remedy  for  every  kind  of  suffering  is  increased  activity 
of  mind,  which  means  increased  instruction.  Action  is  always 
an   anodyne  of   pain.     Therein    lies   the  explanation    of   the 


RELIGION  AND   NON-RELIGION  AMONG    WOMEN.        3°* 

power  of  charity  to  calm  personal  suffering,  which  is  always  in 

some  degree  egoistic.     The  best  way  to  console  one's  self,  fori 

women  and  men  alike,  will  always  be  to  minister  to  someone] 

else ;    hope  revives   in   a  heart   which   gives   hope   to   others. 

Pains  become   gentle  as  they  become  fertile   in    beneficence  J 

and  productivity  is  an  appeasement. 

And  finally,  by  way  of  compensation,  there  are  other  respects 

in  which  women  would  suffer  perhaps  less  than  men  from  the 

disappearance  of  religious  beliefs.     Women  live 

Bestsideof         more    completely  in   the    present  than   men   do, 
female  levity.  r  j  i 

they  are  somewhat  bird-like  in  their  composition, 

and  forget  the  tempest  the  instant  it  is  passed.  Women 
laugh  as  easily  as  they  cry,  and  their  laughter  soon  dries 
their  tears  :  they  are  to  be  forgiven  for  at  least  one  aspect  of 
this  divine  levity.  Moreover  they  have  their  household,  all 
the  tender  and  practical  preoccupations  of  life,  which  absorb 
them  more  completely,  heart  and  soul,  than  men.  A  woman's 
happiness  is  probably  complete  the  instant  she  believes  her- 
self to  be  beautiful  and  feels  that  she  is  loved  ;  a  man's  happi- 
ness is  a  much  more  complex  product  and  contains  a  much 
larcier  number  of  intellectual  elements.  Women  live  more 
wholly  within  the  limits  of  their  own  generation  than  men, 
and  experience  a  sort  of  contemporary  immortality  in  the 
hearts  of  those  they  love. 

Among  the  most  developed  sentiments  of  women  there  are 
two  which  constitute  the  strength  of  their  disposition  to  pro- 
priety :  modesty,  the  dignity  of  their  sex,  and  love, 
love°  ®^^*"  which  is  exclusive  when  it  is.  true.  But  for  these 
two  powerful  causes  religious  motives  would 
always  have  weighed  lightly  with  her.  If  religion  exercises  a 
great  control  over  women,  it  is  by  taking  possession  of  these 
two  motives:  the  surest  means  of  making  women  listen,  and 
almost  the  sole  means,  is  to  awaken  their  love,  or  to  appeal  to 
their  modesty :  to  give  themselves  or  to  refuse  themselves  are 
the  two  great  acts  which  dominate  their  lives,  and  immorality 
among  them  generally  increases  directly  with  the  diminution 
of  their  modesty.  Thence  arises  a  new  and  delicate  problem, 
whether  modesty,  that  compound  of  power  and  grace,  is  not 


3°^      DISSOLUTIOX  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

rather  a  religious  than  a  moral  virtue,  and  if  religion  has 
maintained  it,  would  it  not  disappear  with  the  disappearance 
of  religion,  and  be  enfeebled  by  a  religion  increasingly  scientific 
and,  in  a  sense,  positive  ?  Note  in  the  first  place,  that  if  the 
essence  of  all  feminine  virtue  is  modesty,  as  of  all  male  virtue 
f '  it  is  courage,  that  very  fact  constitutes  an  additional  reason 
for  doing  everything  in  one's  power  to  make  modesty  inde- 
pendent of  religion,  in  order  that  it  may  stand  unaffected  by 
the  doubts  which  necessarily,  in  the  modern  world,  will  over- 
whelm the  latter.  Certainly  modesty  is  capable  of  serving 
remarkably  well  as  a  safeguard  for  beliefs,  and  even  for  irra- 
tional beliefs ;  it  always  prevents  one  from  pushing  reason,  as 
from  pushing  desire  to  the  end,  but  there  is  a  true  and  a  false, 
a  useful  and  a  harmful  modesty.  The  first,  as  we  shall  see,  is 
not  bound  up  with  religion,  either  in  its  origin  or  in  its 
destiny. 

In  the  first  place  is  modesty  of  religious  origin  ?     Every  young 
girl  feels  vaguely  that  she  has  at  her  disposal  a  treasure  which 

a  number  of  people  desire.     This  sentiment,  which 
Origin 0  jg  confused  with  some  obscure  consciousness  of 

sex,  was  necessary  to  enable  the  female  to 
attain  complete  physical  development  before  giving  her- 
self. Precocious  immodesty  must  inevitably,  in  effect  has, 
resulted  in  an  arrested  development.  It  might  easily  have  pro- 
duced also  a  comparative  sterility.  Modesty  is  thus  a  guarantee 
for  the  continuance  of  the  species,  one  of  the  sentiments  that 
natural  selection  must  inevitably  have  tended  to  preserve  and 
to  increase.  It  is  a  condition,  moreover,  of  sexual  selection  ; 
if  the  female  had  been  disposed  to  give  herself  indiscriminately, 
the  species  would  have  suffered.  Happily  desire  is  checked 
by  modesty,  an  obstacle  which  it  can  remove  only  on  condition 
of  the  woman's  being  strongly  attracted  by  the  object  desired  ;  a 
quality  which  will  subsequently  be  transmissible  to  the  species. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  sexual  selection  there  is  in  modesty 
a  great  deal  of  coquetry — a  coquetry  which  is  unaware  of  its  aim, 
which  is  half  unconscious,  and  often  mistakes  for  a  duty  what 
is  really  but  a  bit  of  management.  The  art  of  provisional 
refusal,  and  of  attractive  flight,  must  inevitably  have  attained 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AMONG    WOMEN.        303 

a  high  development  among  superior  beings,  for  it  is  a  power- 
ful medium  of  seduction  and  selection.  Modesty  has  de- 
veloped side  by  side  with  it,  and  really  constitutes  but  a 
fugitive  moment  in  the  eternity  of  female  coquetry.  Coquetry 
originates  in  the  young  girl  who  is  yet  too  ignorant  to  be 
really  modest,  but  too  much  of  a  woman  not  to  love  to  attract 
and  to  retreat ;  and  at  the  other  extreme  it  constitutes  the  last 
remnant  of  modesty  in  women  who  really  possess  none. 
Finally,  modesty  is  also  composed  largely  of  an  element  of 
fear,  which  has  been  very  useful  in  the  preservation  of  the  race. 
Among  animals  the  female  almost  always  runs  some  risk  in  the 
presence  of  the  male,  which  is  generally  stronger  than  she  ; 
love-making  is  not  only  a  crisis  but  a  danger,  and  she  must 
mollify  the  male  before  surrendering  herself  to  him,  must 
seduce  him  before  satisfying  him.  Even  in  the  human  race, 
in  primitive  times,  women  were  not  always  safe  from  violence 
from  men.  Modesty  secures  a  sort  of  expectant  love  which  was 
necessary  in  primitive  times,  a  proof,  a  period  of  mutual 
scrutiny.  Lucretius  has  remarked  that  children,  by  their 
weakness  and  by  their  fragility,  have  contributed  to  the 
softening  of  human  manners  ;  the  same  remark  applies  to 
women  and  to  this  sense  of  their  own  comparative  weakness, 
which  they  experience  so  acutely  in  modesty,  and  which  they 
to  some  degree  communicate  to  men.  Women's  fears  and 
scruples  have  made  man's  hand  less  hard  ;  their  modesty  has 
given  rise  in  him  to  a  certain  form  of  respect,  to  a  form  of 
desire  which  is  less  brutal  and  more  gentle;  they  have  civilized 
love.  Modesty  is  analogous  to  the  species  of  fright  that 
inclines  a  bird  to  flee  one's  caresses,  which  bruise  it.  One's 
very  look  possesses  some  element  of  hardness  for  a  bird;  and 
is  it  not  a  prolongation  of  touch  ?  In  addition  to  these  various 
elements  there  goes,  to  the  composition  of  a  young  girl's  or  a 
young  man's  modesty,  a  higher  and  more  properly  human 
element  ;  the  fear  of  love  itself,  the  fear  of  something  new 
and  unknown,  of  the  profound  and  powerful  instinct  which  is 
awakening  in  one  after  having  up  to  that  time  lain  asleep, 
which  abruptly  arises  in  one  and  struggles  for  dominance  with 
the  other  forces  and  impulses  of  one's  being.    The  young  man, 


304      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

unaccustomed  as  yet  to  submit  to  the  domination  of  this 
instinct,  finds  in  it  something  stranger  and  more  mysterious 
than  in  any  other;  cest  rinterrogation  anxieiise  de  cheriibin.^ 

To  sum  up,  the  sentiment  of  modesty  neither  originates  in 

rehgion  nor  depends  upon  it ;  it  is  only  very  indirectly  allied  to 

„  ,.  .  it.     Even  from  the  point  of  view  of  modesty  a 

Religious  _  •'  ^ 

education  and  religious  education  is  not  above  reproach, 
mo  es  y.  Among  Protestants,  is  the  reading  of  the   Bible 

always  a  good  school?  M.  Bruston  has  contended  for  the 
propriety  of  reading  the  Songs  of  Songs  in  an  epoch  like  ours 
when  marriages  are  often  made  out  of  interest  rather  than  of 
incHnation  ;  and  indeed  we  agree  with  him  that  the  reading 
of  the  Song  of  Songs  does  tend  to  develop  certain  inclinations 
in  young  girls,  but  hardly  an  inclination  to  a  regular  and  com- 
plicated church  marriage.  Among  Catholics  how  many  indis- 
creet questions  the  confessor  puts  to  the  young  girl !  How 
many  prohibitions,  as  dangerous  in  their  way  as  suggestions ! 
And  even  in  the  item  of  modesty  excess  is  a  defect  ;  a  little 
wholesome  liberty  in  education  and  manners  would  do  no 
harm.  Catholic  education  sometimes  distorts  the  woman's 
mind  by  making  it  too  different  from  that  of  the  man,  and  by 
accustoming  it  to  a  perpetual  timidity  and  discomposure  in 
the  presence  of  the  being  with  whom  she  must  pass  her  life, 
and  by  rendering  her  modesty  som.ewhat  too  indeterminate  and 
savage,  and  converting  it  into  a  sort  of  religion. 

There   is  also  sometimes  manifest  a  sort  of  perversion   of 
modesty    in   the   mystical    tendencies    of    woman,  which    are 

especially  strong  at  the  age  of  puberty.     These 
True  modesty.  ,         .  ,  ,  .... 

tendencies,  exploited  by  the  priesthood,  give  rise 

to  convents  and  cloisters.  A  Catholic  education  too  often 
constitutes  for  young  girls  a  sort  of  moral  mutilation ;  one 
endeavours  to  keep  them  virgins,  and  one  succeeds  in  convert- 
ing them  into  imperfect  women.     Religions  are  too  inclined 

'  Shame  is  usually  regarded  as  constituting  the  essence  of  modesty,  but  shame 
can  have  been  but  one  of  the  elements  in  its  formation  ;  such  shame  as  actually 
■exists  is  readily  explicable  as  a  sense  of  the  uncleanness  attaching,  in  especial  in  the 
case  of  the  woman  (of  whom  the  Hebrews  required  a  periodic  purification),  to  cer- 
tain animal  functions.  But  modesty  must  have  been  developed  also  by  the  use  of 
■clothing  and  the  growth  of  the  habit  of  covering,  first  the  loins  and  then  more  and 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AMONG    WOMEN.        305 

to  consider  the  union  of  the  sexes  under  I  know  not  what 
mystical  aspect,  and,  from  the  point  of  view  of  morals,  as  a 
stain.  Certainly  purit)'  is  a  power  ;  it  is  with  a  little  diamond 
point  that  mountains,  and  even  continents,  are  nowadays 
pierced,  but  Christianity  has  confounded  chastity  with  purity. 
True  purity  is  that  of  love,  true  chastity  is  chastity  of  heart ; 
chastity  of  heart  survives  chastity  of  body,  and  stops  at  the 
point  beyond  which  i^  would  become  a  restriction,  an  obstacle 
to  the  free  development  of  the  entire  being.  An  eunuch  or 
a  young  man  studying  for  the  priesthood  may  well  be  desti- 
tute of  chastity  ;  the  smile  of  a  young  girl  at  the  thought  of 
her  fiance  may  be  infinitely  more  virginal  than  that  of  a  nun. 
Nothing  moreover  stains  the  mind  like  a  too  exclusive  pre- 
occupation with  the  things  of  the  body  ;  incessant  attention 
to  them  necessarily  evokes  a  chain  of  immodest  imagery. 
St.  Jerome  in  his  desert,  believing,  as  he  relates,  that  he  saw 
the  Roman  courtesans  dancing  naked  in  the  moonlight,  was  less 
pure  in  heart  and  brain  than  Socrates  unceremoniously  paying 
a  visit  to  Theodora.  A  too  self-conscious  modesty  is  immodest. 
The  whole  grace  of  virginity  is  ignorance  ;  the  instant  vir- 
ginity becomes  aware  of  itself  it  is  tarnished  ;  virginity,  like 
certain  fruits,  can  only  be  preserved  by  a  process  of  desic- 
cation. Love  and  sunshine  transform  the  universe.  Modesty 
is  simply  a  coat  of  mail  which  presupposes  a  state  of  war 
between  the  sexes,  and  aims  at  preventing  a  blind  promiscuity; 
the  mutual  self-abandonment  of  love  is  more  chaste  than  the 
modest  inquietude  and  the  immodest  suspicion  which  pre- 
cede it;  there  grows  up  between  two  people  who  love  each 
other  a  sort  of  confidence  that  results  in  their  neither  wishing 
nor  being  able  to  keep  back  anything  from  each  other;  self- 
constraint,  suspicion,  consciousness  of  antagonism  of  interest, 
all  disappear.  This  is  assuredly  the  characteristic  of  the 
most    perfect  form   of  reunion    that  can  exist  in  this  world  ; 

more  of  the  entire  person  ;  and  indeed  the  development  of  modesty  and  of  the  habit 
of  wearing  clothes  must  each  have  been  aided  by  the  other.  The  habit  of  going 
covered  gives  rise  very  soon  to  shame  at  being  seen  uncovered.  The  little  negresses 
whom  Livingstone  supplied  with  shifts  became,  in  a  few  days,  so  accustomed  to 
having  the  upper  half  of  their  bodies  hidden  that,  when  they  were  surprised  in  their 
chambers  in  the  morning,  they  hastily  covered  their  breasts. 


3o6      DISSOLUTIOIV  OF  RELIGIOXS  IN  EXISIING  SOCIETIES. 

Plato  believed  that  the  human  body  is  the  prison  of  the  spirit 
and  cuts  it  off  from  immediate  communication  with  its  fellow- 
spirits  ;  paradoxical  as  it  may  seem,  it  is  in  love  that  the  body 
becomes  less  opaque,  and  effaces  itself,  and  soul  communicates 
with  soul.  Nay,  marriage  itself  preserves  in  women  a  sort 
of  moral  virginity,  as  one  may  recognize  on  the  scarred  and 
discoloured  hands  of  old  women  the  white  line  that  has  been 
protected  for  thirty  years,  by  the  wedding  ring,  against  the 
wear  and  tear  of  life. 

Modesty  is  a  sentiment  which  has  survived,  as  we  have  seen, 
because  it  was  useful  to  the  propagation  of  the  species;  mysti- 
cism perverts  and  corrupts  it  and  enlists  it  pre- 
ceiibacr^'^  °°  cisely  against  the  propagation  of  the  species. 
Between  a  Carmelite  nun  and  a  courtesan  like 
Ninon  de  Lenclos  the  sociologist  might  well  hesitate;  socially 
they  are  almost  equally  worthless,  their  lives  are  almost 
equally  miserable  and  vain  ;  the  excessive  macerations  of  the 
one  are  as  foolish  as  the  pleasures  of  the  other ;  the  moral 
desiccation  of  the  one  is  often  not  without  some  analogy  to 
the  corruption  of  the  other.  Vows  or  habits  of  perpetual 
chastity,  the  monastic  life  itself,  have  found  in  our  days  an 
unexpected  defender  in  M.  Renan.  It  is  true  he  does  not 
regard  such  matters  from  the  point  of  view  of  Christianity. 
If  he  has  a  word  to  say  in  favour  of  perpetual  chastity,  it  is 
strictly  in  the  name  of  physiological  induction  ;  he  considers 
chastity  simply  as  a  means  of  heightening  the  capacity  of  the 
brain  and  of  increasing  one's  intellectual  fertility.  He  does 
not  absolutely  blame  impurity,  he  delights  in  a  sense,  as  he 
himself  says,  in  the  joys  of  the  debauchee  and  the  courtesan  ; 
he  possesses  the  boundless  curiosity  and  the  accomplished 
impudicity  of  the  man  of  science.  But  he  believes  that  there 
exists  a  sort  of  intellectual  antinomy  between  complete  intel- 
lectual development  and  bodily  love.  The  true  man  of  science 
should  concentrate  his  entire  vitality  in  his  brain,  should 
.^jjjy^  devote  his  life  to  abstractions  and  chimeras;  by  this  reserva- 
tion of  his  entire  strength  for  the  service  of  his  head,  his 
intelligence  will  flower  in  double  blossoms,  the  monstrous 
beauty  of  which,  produced    by  the  transformation  of  stamens 


JiELIGW.V  AND   XOX-RELIGION  AMONG    WOMEN.        30? 

into  petals,  is  the  achievement  of  sterihty.  Love  is  a  heavy 
tax  to  pay  for  the  vanities  of  the  world,  and  in  the  budget  of 
the  human  idce  women  count  almost  exclusively  on  the  side 
of  expense.  Science,  economical  of  time  and  force,  should 
teach  one  to  disembarrass  one's  self  of  women  and  love,  and  to 
leave  such  futilities  to  the  drones.  These  paradoxes  that 
M.  Renan  puts  forth  rest  on  a  well-known  scientific  fact : 
that  the  most  intelligent  species  are  those  in  which  reproduc- 
tion is  least  active  ;  fertility,  generally  speaking,  varies 
inversely  to  cerebral  energy.  But  love  must  not  quite  be 
confounded  with  sexual  activity,  unless  one  is  to  draw  the 
somewhat  strange  conclusion  that  among  animals  hares  are 
those  who  are  best  acquainted  with  love,  and  among  men 
Frenchmen  are  those  who  know  least  of  it.  From  the  fact 
that  excessive  commerce  with  the  other  sex  paralyses  the 
intelligence,  it  does  not  in  the  least  follow  that  the  sentiment 
of  love  produces  the  same  effect  and  that  one's  intellectual 
power  diminishes  with  the  growth  of  one's  heart. 

We  believe  that  love  may  be  sufficiently  defended  on  intel- 
lectual as  well  as  on  moral  grounds.     If  it  in  certain  respects 

involves  an  expense  of  force,  it  in  others  so 
stimuknt""^''^^    heightens    the     entire     vital     energy,    that     the 

expense  must  be  regarded  as  one  of  those  fruit- 
ful investments  which  are  inseparable  from  the  very  continu- 
ance of  life.  To  live,  after  all,  in  the  physical  as  well  as  in  the 
moral  sense  of  the  word,  is  not  only  to  receive  but  to  give, 
but  above  all  to  give  one's  self  to  love  ;  it  is  dif^cult  to  pervert 
one  of  the  most  primitive  elements  of  the  human  character, 
without  also  perverting  the  heart  and  the  intelligence.  Love 
is  above  all  things  a  stimulant  to  the  entire  being  and  to  the 
brain  itself ;  it  takes  possession  of  the  whole  man  ;  it  plays 
upon  man  as  upon  a  harp  and  sounds  the  whole  compass  of 
his  being.  It  cannot  be  replaced  by  coffee  or  hasheesh. 
Women  not  only  complete  men,  and  form  by  union  with  them 
a  more  complete,  more  rounded  existence,  more  justly  epito- 
mizing the  possibilities  of  life  ;  they  are  capable  also,  by  their 
mere  presence,  by  their  mere  smile,  of  doubling  our  individual 
powers  and  carrying  them  to  the  highest  point  of  energy  of 


rvo 


3^S      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

which  they  are  capable.  Our  manhood  leans  upon  their  grace. 
All  other  motives  which  inspire  man — love  of  reputation,  of 
glory,  even  of  God — are  slight  as  compared  with  the  love  of  a 
woman  who  understands  her  role.  Even  the  most  abstract 
passion,  the  passion  for  science,  often  fails  to  acquire  its  entire 
strength  until  it  has  called  to  its  aid  the  love  of  a  woman, 
which  wrings  a  smile  out  of  the  grave  alembics  and  fills  the 
crucibles  with  the  gaiety  of  hope.  Nothing  is  simple  in  our 
being  ;  all  things  amalgamate  and  unite  together.  They  who 
invented  the  monk  aimed  at  simplifying  human  life  ;  they 
succeeded  only  in  unnaturally  complicating  it  or  mutilating  it. 
But  love  does  not  only  play,  in  the  life  of  the  man  of 
science  and  of  the  thinker,  the  role  of  stimulant  ;  over  and 
above  its  function  in  inciting  such   men  to  work, 

Lnvp  muK  PS  • 

for  sanity.  '*•   Contributes    indirectly   to   rectify   the   product 

of  their  labours.  Love  lives  in  reality,  and  to 
live  in  reality  helps  one  to  think  justly.  Rightly  to  under- 
stand the  world  in  which  we  live,  we  must  not  dwell  beyond 
its  bounds,  must  not  make  a  world  of  our  own,  an  unnatural 
and  frigid  world,  rounded  by  the  walls  of  a  monastery.  "To 
aim  at  being  an  angel  is  to  be  a  beast,"  says  Pascal ;  and  not 
only  to  be  a  beast,  but  in  a  measure  to  brutalize  one's  self,  to 
dim  the  precision  and  vivacity  of  one's  intelligence.  A  com- 
plete acquaintance  with  the  details  of  the  lives  of  great  minds 
would  reveal  surprising  traces  of  love  in  the  audacity  and 
sweep  of  great  metaphysical  and  cosmological  hypotheses,  in 
profound  generalizations,  in  passionate  exactitude  of  demon- 
stration. Love  reaches  everywhere  ;  and  as  the  philosopher 
who  is  also  a  lover  pushes  audaciously  forward  in  the  domain 
of  thought,  he  moves  more  easily,  more  lightly,  more  con- 
fidently, with  a  heightened  faith  in  himself,  in  others,  and  in 
this  mysterious  and  mute  universe.  Love  inspires  one  with 
that  gentleness  of  heart  which  inclines  one  to  an  interest  in 
the  smallest  things  and  in  their  place  in  the  universe.  There 
is  great  kindliness  in  the  heart  of  the  true  philosopher. 

Then,  too,  what  is  science  without  art?     The  most  intimate 
relations  exist  between  the  intellectual  and  artistic  faculties.' 

'  See  the  author's  Problhnes  de  V esthitique  coniemporaine,  livre  ii. 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AMONG    WOMEN.        309 

Could  art  exist  without  love  ?     Love  becomes,  in  matters   of 

art,   of    the   very   tissue    of   thought.     To  compose  verses   or 

music,  to  paint  or  model,  is  simply  to  transmute 

Love  the  Xomq  by  diverse  methods  and  into  diverse  forms, 

essence  of  art.  ^  i  ■  i    r        i 

Whatever    the    more    or    less    sincere    defenders 

of  the  monastic  spirit  and  religious  mysticism  may  say,  love, 
which  is  as  old  as  the  world,  is  not  upon  the  point  of  quitting 
it  ;  and  it  is  in  the  hearts  and  minds  of  the  greatest  of  mankind 
that  it  dwells  most  securely.  "  Human  frailty !  "  someone  will 
murmur.  "  No,"  we  reply  :  "  source  of  strength  and  strength 
itself."  If  love  is  the  science  of  the  ignorant  it  constitutes 
some  part  also  of  the  science  of  the  sage.  Eros  is  of  all  the 
gods  the  one  on  whom  Prometheus  is  most  dependent,  for  it  is 
from  Eros  that  he  steals  the  sacred  flame.  Eros  will  survive 
in  every  heart,  and  in  especial  in  every  woman's  heart,  when  all 
religions  shall  have  decayed. 

We    may   conclude,   therefore,   that   the   characteristic   ten- 
dencies of  woman  may  be  employed  in  the  services  of  truth, 
,     science,      free-thought,     and      social      fraternity. 

Importance  of  °  i  t  •  i  • 

early  education  Everything  depends  on  the  education  that  is 
in  woman.  given  her,  and  on  the  influence  of  the  man  whom 

she  marries.  Woman  must  be  begun  with  in  childhood. 
The  life  of  a  woman  is  more  orderly  and  continuous  than  that 
of  a  man  ;  for  that  reason  the  habits  of  childhood  exercise  a 
more  permanent  influence  over  her.  There  is  but  one  great 
revolution  in  a  woman's  life  :  marriage.  And  there  are  women 
for  whom  this  revolution  does  not  exist  ;  and  there  are  others 
for  whom  it  exists  in  its  most  attenuated  form,  as  when,  for 
example,  the  husband's  manner  of  life  and  his  beliefs  are 
practically  the  same  as  those  of  the  wife's  mother  and  family. 
In  a  tranquil  environment,  such  as  the  majority  of  women 
exist  in,  the  influence  of  early  education  may  persist  to  the 
end  ;  the  small  number  of  religious  or  philosophical  ideas  that 
were  planted  in  a  woman's  brain  in  her  childhood  may  be 
found  there  years  afterward,  practically  unchanged.  The 
home  is  a  protection,  a  sort  of  hot-house  in  which  plants 
flourish  that  could  not  live  in  the  open  air;  the  film  of  glass  or 
of  veiling  behind  which  women  habitually  stand  to  look  out 


3'0      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

into  the  street  does  not  protect  them  against  sun  and  rain 
alone.  A  woman's  soul,  like  her  complexion,  preserves  some- 
thing of  its  native  whiteness. 

In  France,  in  the  majority  of  instances,  women  are  children 

up    to    the    time    of   their    marriage;  and  children  inclined  to 

„   ,     ,  regard  the  man  to  whom  their  parents  \\\s\\  them 

Husband  re-  °  ^ 

spoasible  for  to  give  their  hand  with  a  certain  mixture  of  fear 

wi  e s  e  ucation.     ^^^     ^£   respect.     Such    a   woman's   intelligence 

is  almost  as  virgin  as  her  body,  and  in  the  first  months  of, 
marriage  the  husband  may  acquire,  if  he  chooses,  a  decisive 
influence  over  his  wife,  model  her  as  yet  imperfectly  devel- 
oped brain  almost  to  his  will.  If  he  waits,  if  he  temporizes, 
he  will  find  his  task  difificult — the  more  so  as  his  wife  will 
some  day  gain  over  him  some  such  influence  as  he  might  at 
first  have  gained  over  her.  The  instant  a  woman  becomes 
fully  aware  of  her  power,  she  almost  always  becomes  the  con- 
trolling influence  in  the  household  ;  if  her  husband  has  not 
formed  her,  if  he  has  left  her  with  all  the  prejudices  and 
ignorances  of  a  child,  and  often  of  a  spoiled  child,  she  will, 
in  the  course  of  time,  form  or  rather  deform  him — will  oblige 
him  at  first  to  tolerate,  and  ultimately  to  accept,  her  childish 
beliefs  and  errors,  and  perhaps  in  the  end,  profiting  by  the 
decline  of  his  intelligence,  with  the  coming  on  of  old  age,  she 
will  convert  him,  and  by  that  fact  retard  the  intellectual 
progress  of  the  household  by  an  entire  generation.  The  priest- 
hood positively  count  on  the  growing  influence  of  the  wife  in 
every  household  ;  but  they  are  helpless  in  the  first  months, 
or  perhaps  years,  of  marriage  against  the  influence  that  the 
husband  may  exercise.  And  once  fashioned  by  him  the  wife 
may  continue  to  exist  to  the  end  of  her  life  in  his  image,  and  to 
give  him  back  his  own  ideas  and  instil  them  into  his  children. 
The  free-thinker,  it  is  true,  labours  under  a  great  disadvan- 
tage in  the  work  of  conversion  :  a  believer  may  always  decline 

to  reason  ;  whenever  an  intellectual  duel  seems 
difficult*  "^^  "^     ^°  \\'\vc\.  to  be  disadvantageous  he  may  decline  to 

fight  ;  a  high  degree  of  indulgent  tenacity  and 
of  prudence  is  necessary  in  a  discussion  with  anyone  who  is 
thus  ready   to   take   refuge   in   flight   at   the  slightest   alarm. 


RELIGION  AND   NON-RELIGION  AMONG    WOMEN.        Z^^ 

What  can  one  do  against  a  gentle  and  obstinate  determination 
to  say  nothing,  to  intrench  one's  self  in  ignorance,  to  allow 
argument  to  shatter  itself  against  an  outer  wall.  "  It  seemed 
to  me,'"  a  Russian  novelist  cries,  "as  if  all  my  words  bounded 
off  her  like  peas  shot  at  a  marble  statue."  One  of  Shak- 
spere's  heroines  proposes  to  essay  matrimony  as  an  qxercise 
of  patience.  If  patience  is,  in  the  management  of  the  house- 
hold, the  great  virtue  of  the  wife,  the  man's  virtue  should  be 
perseverance  and  active  obstinacy  in  an  effort  to  fashion  and 
create  her  to  his  desire  and  ideal.  I  once  questioned  a  woman 
who  had  married  a  free-thinker  with  a  secret  intention  of  con- 
verting him..  The  upshot  of  the  matter  was  the  precise  op- 
posite, and  I  quote  below  her  own  account,  as  she  gave  it  to  me, 
of  the  successive  phases  of  this  moral  crisis.  It  is  of  course  only 
an  isolated  example,  but  it  may  serve  to  illustrate  the  character 
of  women,  and  the  more  or  less  great  facility  with  which  they 
may  be  made  to  accept  scientific  or  philosophic  ideas. 

"  The  double  aim  of  every  Christian  woman  is  to  save  souls, 
in  general,  and  to  save  her  own  in  particular.     To  aid  Christ, 

TTTT,    ^  w      by  bringing  back    into  the  fold   the  sheep   who 
Wife's  effort  to        -^  '^     ° 

conYert her hus-     have  strayed    away,  is  her  great  dream,   and  to 

^^^^'  preserve    her   own    purity    is    her    constant    pre- 

occupation. When  the  moment  came  for  me  to  try  my 
powers,  a  lively  solicitude  took  possession  of  me  :  should  I 
really  succeed  in  winning  over  the  man  to  whom  I  was  to 
unite  my  life,  or  would  he  succeed  in  winning  me  over?  Great 
is  the  power  of  evil,  and  whoever  exposes  himself  to  tempt- 
ation will  perish,  but  if  evil  is  powerful,  God,  I  assured  myself, 
is  still  more  powerful,  and  God  never  abandons  those 
who  confide  in  him,  and  I  confided  in  God.  To  convince  the 
incredulous  who  had  systematized  their  incredulity  into  a 
reasoned  whole  was  no  slight  task,  and  I  did  not  hope  to 
accomplish  it  in  four  and  twenty  hours.  My  plan  was  this  :  to 
be  faithful  in  the  midst  of  the  unfaithful,  immutable  and 
confident  in  my  religion  which  was  the  religion  of  the  humble, 
the  simple,  and  the  ignorant ;  to  do  the  utmost  good  possible, 
according  to  the  first  of  Christ's  commandments;  to  practise 
my  religion  in  silence  but  openly;  to  domesticate  it  in  my  house- 


312      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

hold  ;  to  inaugurate  a  secret,  slow,  incessant  combat  which 
should  last,  if  necessary,  till  the  end  of  my  life.  And  then 
to  rely  upon  the  infinite  mercy  of  God. 

"  With  this  disposition  of  mind  I  had  no  difficulty  in  stand- 
ing mute  whenever  my  husband  attacked  my  beliefs.  My  first 
object  was  to  prove  the  uselessness  of  all  discussion,  the  firm- 
ness of  my  faith.  I  knew  perfectly  well  that  I  really  was 
unable  to  reply,  that  he  knew  so  much  and  I  so  little.  But  if 
I  had  only  been  a  doctor  of  theology  I  would  have  accepted, 
the  challenge,  I  would  have  heaped  up  proof  on  proof !  With 
the  truth  and  God  for  me,  how  could  I  have  been  vanquished  ? 
But  I  was  not  in  the  least  like  a  doctor  of  theology,  and  the 
result  was  that,  fortified  in  my  ignorance,  I  listened  placidly 
to  all  his  arguments,  and  the  livelier,  the  more  cogent  they 
were,  the  more  profoundly  I  was  convinced  of  the  truth  of  my 
religion,  which  stood  erect  under  so  much  battering  and 
triumphed  in  its  immunity. 

"  I  was  inexpugnable,  and  the  siege  might  have  lasted  long 
if  my  husband  had  not  recognized  the  strength  of  my  position 
and  changed  his  tactics.  His  object  was  to  force  me  to 
discuss,  to  follow  his  objections,  to  understand  them  in  spite 
of  myself,  to  turn  them  over  in  my  own  mind.  He  told  me 
that  it  would  be  a  help  to  him  in  his  work  if  I  should  epito- 
mize sometimes  in  writing,  sometimes  viva  voce,  a  certain 
number  of  works  on  religion.  He  put  into  my  hands  M. 
Renan's  '  Vie  de  J^sus,'  M.  Reville's  wise  and  conscientious 
little  book  on  '  L'Histoire  du  dogme  de  la  divinite  de  Jesus 
Christ,'  often  full  of  abstract  inquiries  in  which  the  sincerity 
of  the  author  was  evident  and  contagious,  even  when  the 
reader  was  looking  for  sophisms.'  I  could  not  refuse  to  read 
the  books  without  abandoning  my  most  cherished  ambition, 
which  was  to  aid  my  husband  in  his  work.  My  conscience  was 
involved,  and   I   could  not  consult  my  confessor  because  we 

'  "  Among  the  polemical  works  on  Christianity  I  shall  cite  one  which  is  perhaps 
somewhat  old,  but  precious,  in  that  it  sums  up  with  great  impartiality  the  whole 
mass  of  secular  objections,  including  a  large  number  of  modern  objections  to  Chris- 
.tianity,  the  book  of  IM.  Patrice  Larroque,  entitled  Examen  critique  des  doctrines 
de  la  religion  ChrMenne." 


RELIGION  AND  NON-RELIGION  AMONG    WOMEN.        313 

were  then  abroad  ;  moreover  my  faith,  although  profound,  had 
always  been,  or  pretended  to  be,  generous  and  enlightened. 
If  I  was  ever  to  hand  my  religion  on  I  must  not  be  intolerant; 
and  I  read  !  M.  Renan  did  not  especially  scandalize  me,  he 
was  a  follower  of  Jesus,  writing  of  Jesus  ;  his  book,  which 
has  charmed  many  women  as  much  as  a  romance,  saddened 
me  without  repelling  me.  I  was  obliged  to  make  a  written 
abstract  of  the  entire  book  and  had  to  put  myself  into  the 
author's  place,  to  see  things  with  his  eyes,  to  think  his 
thoughts;  and,  in  spite  of  myself,  I  sometimes  saw  in  my  own 
heart,  side  by  side  with  the  impeccable  and  perfect  Christ  God, 
the  figure  of  the  imperfect,  suffering,  worn  man,  out  of  patience 
and  cursing.  The  other  books,  which  were  much  more 
abstract,  called  for  a  much  greater  effort  on  my  part,  but  the 
very  effort  that  I  put  forth  constrained  me  more  completely 
to  assimilate  their  contents.  Every  day  I  lost  ground,  and 
my  once  passive  faith  became  slowly  transformed  into  an 
anxious  desire  to  know,  into  a  hope  that  a  more  complete 
knowledge  would  re-establish  my  broken  defences. 

"  One  day,  my  husband  said  to  me  abruptly :  '  You  will  not 
refuse  to  read  the  Bible,  which  is  the  source  of  your  religion, 
from  one  end  to  the  other  ?  '  I  acceded  with  pleasure,  I  did  not 
wait  for  permission — I  was  beyond  that ;  it  seemed  to  me  that 
to  read  the  Bible  must  be  the  beginning  of  that  profound 
knowledge  which  I  envied  my  ideal  doctor  of  theology.  It 
was  with  trembling  fingers  that  I  opened  the  black-bound 
book,  with  its  closely  printed  pages  dictated  by  God  Himself, 
alive  still  with  the  divine  Word  I  I  held  in  my  hands  the 
truth,  the  justification  of  human  life,  the  keys  of  the  future  ; 
it  seemed  to  me  that  the  tablets  of  Sinai  had  been  committed 
to  me  as  to  the  prostrate  multitude  of  the  Hebrews  at  the 
foot  of  the  mountain,  and  I  also  would  have  kneeled  humbly 
to  receive  it.  But,  as  I  made  my  way  through  the  book,  the 
immorality  of  certain  pages  seemed  to  me  so  evident  that  my 
whole  heart  rose  in  revolt  against  them.  I  had  not  been 
hardened  from  my  childhood,  as  Protestant  girls  are,  to  all 
these  tales.  The  Catholic  education,  which  does  what  it  can  to 
keep  the  Sacred  Books  out  of  sight,  seems  to  me  in  this  respect, 


314      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

and  only  in  this  respect,  much  superior  to  the  Protestant 
religion.  In  any  event,  it  prepares  one  who  reads  the  Bible 
for  the  first  time  in  mature  years  to  feel  much  more  acutely 
the  profound  immorality  of  sacred  history.  Catholicism  often 
perverts  the  intelligence  ;  Protestantism  might  naturally  go 
the  length  of  perverting  the  hearts  Unbelievers  have  often 
made  the  moral  monstrosities  in  the  Bible  a  subject  of  raillery  ; 
I  felt  nothing  but  indignation  when  I  came  across  them,  and 
I  closed  with  disgust  the  book  which  I  had  so  long  regarded 
with  respect. 

"  What  should  I  think  of  it ;  what  should  I  believe  ?  The 
words  of  infinite  love  and  charity  which  the  New  Testament 
contains  came  back  to  me.  If  God  was  anywhere  He  must 
be  there,  and  once  more  I  opened  the  sacred  book — the  book 
which  has  so  often  tempted  humanity.  After  all,  it  was  Christ 
that  I  had  adored  rather  than  the  Lord  of  Hosts.  ]\Iy 
acquaintance  had  been  almost  wholly  limited  to  the  Gospel  of 
St.  John,  which  I  had  learned  was  of  disputable  authenticity. 
I  read  the  Gospels  from  end  to  end.  Even  in  St.  John  I  could 
not  find  the  model  man  above  reproach,  the  incarnate  God, 
the  divine  Word ;  in  the  very  midst  of  the  beauties  and  sub- 
limities of  the  text,  I  myself  began  to  perceive  innumerable 
contradictions,  naivetes,  superstitions,  and  moral  failings. 
My  beliefs  no  longer  existed,  I  had  been  betrayed  by  my  God, 
my  whole  previous  intellectual  life  looked  to  me  more  and 
more  like  a  dream.  This  dream  had  its  beautiful  aspects; 
even  to-day  I  sometimes  regret  the  consolation  that  it  once 
afforded  me  and  can  never  afford  me  again.  Nevertheless,  in 
all  sincerity,  if  I  had  the  chance  to  sleep  once  more  the  intel- 
lectual sleep  of  my* girlhood,  to  forget  all  that  I  have  learned, 
to  return  to  my  errors — I  w^ould  not  for  the  world  consent  to 
take  it,  I  would  not  take  a  step  backward.  The  memory  of 
the  illusions  that  I  have  lost  has  never  disturbed  the  line  of 
reasoning  by  means  of  which  I  lost  them.  When  once  I  had 
come  face  to  face  with  the  reality,  it  maintained  itself  from 
that  moment  on,  sometimes  painfully,  but  steadily  in  my 
imagination.  The  last  thing  that  a  human  being  can  willingly 
consent  to  is  to  be  deceived." 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE    EFFECT   OF    RELIGION   AND    NON-RELIGION   ON    POPULA- 
TION  AND   THE    FUTURE   OF   THE    RACE. 

I.  Importance  of  the  problem  of  population — Antagonism 
between  numerical  strength  and  wealth — Necessity  of  numbers 
for  the  maintenance  and  progress  of  the  race — Necessity  of  giving 
the  advantage  of  numbers  to  the  superior  races — Problem  of 
population  in  France — Its  relation  to  the  religious  problem — Are 
the  reasons  for  the  restriction  of  the  number  of  births  physio- 
logical, moral,  or  economic  ? — Malthusianism  in  France — The 
true  national  peril. 

II.  Remedies — Is  a  return  to  religion  possible? — Religious  power- 
lessness  and  growing  tolerance  in  the  matter — The  influence 
that  the  law  might  exercise  upon  tlie  causes  of  small  families — 
Enumeration  of  these  causes — Reform  of  the  law  in  regard  to 
filial  duty — (Support  of  parents) — Reform  of  the  law  of  inheri- 
tance— Reform  of  the  military  law  for  the  purpose  of  favouring 
large  families  and  of  permitting  emigration  to  the  French  colonies. 

III.  Influence  of  public  education:  its  necessity  as  a  substitute 
for  religious  sentiment. 

One  of  the  most  important  of  the  problems  to  which  the 
gradual  enfeeblement  of  the  religious  sentiment  has  given  rise 
is  that  of  race  fertility  and  the  question  of  population.  Almost 
all  religions  have  attached  a  considerable  importance  to  the  rapid 
increase  of  population.  With  the  diminution  of  the  influence 
of  religions  among  the  superior  races  of  mankind,  shall  we  not 
lose  an  important  aid  in  their  maintenance  and  multiplication? 

I.  In  the  beginning,  for  the  earliest  aggregations  of  mankind, 
number  was  a  condition  of  power  and  consequently  of  security. 

.  ^  The  power  of  wealth,  which  can  be  concentrated 

Antagonism  ^  ' 

between  wealth  in  the  possession  of  a  single  man,  did  not,  so  to 
an  popuation.  gpeak,  exist.  In  our  days  wealth  has  become  a 
power  which  is  sufficient  unto  itself,  and  which  division  and 
distribution     often    inevitably    dissipate.      Therein    lies    the' 

315 


3«6      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

source  of  the  reasoning  which  appeals  nowadays  to  the  heads 
of  families:  "To  render  a  family  powerful  one  must  transmit 
one's  capital  in  as  undivided  a  state  as  possible  ;  that  is  to  say, 
one  must  restrict  the  numbers  of  one's  descendants  to  the 
utmost  feasible  limits."  Capital  and  capitalistic  egoism  is 
therefore  the  enemy  of  population,  because  multiplication  of 
men  always  implies  a  more  or  less  minute  subdivision  of 
wealth. 

Religion    has    always    held    the    power    of    capital,    in    this 
respect,  in  check.      The   Christian,  the    Hindu,    the   Moham- 
Importance of      iTf^e<^^n  religion  all  correspond  to  a  state  of  things 
rapid  increase  of    very  different  from  that  of  the  modern  world  ;  to 
popu  a  ion.  ^  state   of  society  in  which  number  constitutes  a 

great  power,  in  which  large  families  possess  an  immediate  and 
visible  utility.  The  greater  number  of  the  great  religions  are 
at  one  in  the  precept :  "  Increase  and  multiply."  According  to 
the  laws  of  Manou,  one  of  the  conditions  of  salvation  is  the 
large  number  of  male  descendants.  The  religious  and  national 
tradition  of  the  Jews  on  the  point  is  well  known.  Every 
religion  of  Jewish  origin  being  thus  favourable  to  increase  in 
the  size  of  the  family,  and  expressly  prohibiting  means  of 
prevention,  it  follows  that,  other  things  equal,  a  sincerely 
Christian  or  Jewish  people  will  multiply  more  rapidly  than  a 
free-thinking  people.  The  infertility  of  the  higher  races, 
over  and  above  the  influence  of  the  opposition  between 
religion  and  the  modern  spirit,  is  induced  also  by  a  sort  of 
antinomy  between  civilization  and  race  propagation :  rapid 
civilization  is  always  accompanied  by  a  certain  race  corruption. 
This  antinomy  must  be  remedied  under  penalty  of  extinction. 
Life  is  intense  in  proportion  to  the  number  of  young,  ambi- 
tious people  who  engage  in  it ;  the  struggle  for  existence 
is  fertile  just  so  far  as  it  is  carried  on  by  young  men  rather 
than  by  men  who  are  fatigued  and  who  no  longer  possess  an 
enthusiasm  for  work;  a  young  and  rapidly  increasing  nation 
constitutes  a  richer  and  more  powerful  organism,  a  steam- 
engine  working  at  a  high  pressure.  One-half,  perhaps  three- 
fourths  of  the  distinguished  men  have  come  of  numerous 
families  ;  some  have  been  the  tenth,  some  the  twelfth  child  ;  to 


POPULATION  AND    THE  FUTURE   OF    THE  RACE.       317 

restrict  the  number  of  children  is  to  restrict  the  production  of 
talent  and  genius,  and  that,  too,  out  of  all  proportion  to  the 
restriction   of  the  family.     An  only  son,  far  from  having,  on 
the  average,  a  greater  number  of  chances  of  being  a  remark- 
able man,  really  possesses  fewer ;  in  especial  if  he  belongs  to  the 
upper  classes.     "  Both  the  mother  and  father,  it  has  been  said, 
watch  over  this  first  child  and  enfeeble  it  by  superfluous  care, 
and  spare  it,  by  yielding  to  its  wishes,  all  moral  gymnastic." 
Every  child  who  expects  to  be  the  sole  inheritor  of  a  srnalH\ 
fortune  will  put  forth  less  energy,  in  the  struggle  for  existence, 
than  he  otherwise  would.     And  finally,  it  is   a   physiological 
fact   that   the  first  children  are  often  less   vigorous   and   less^ 
intelligent ;  maternity  is  a  function  which  becomes  perfect,  asi 
other  functions  do,  by  repetition;  a  mother's  first  effort  is  asj 
rarely  a  masterpiece  as  a  poet's.     To  limit  the  number  of  chil-, 
dren  is.  therefore,  in  a  certain  measure  to  dwarf  their  physical 
and  intellectual  powers. 

/-^Ks.  an  increase  of  population  heightens  the  intensity  of  the 
'  physical  and  mental  life  of  a  nation,  so  also  it  heightens  the 
intensity  of  the  economic  life  of  a  nation,  stimulates  the  circula- 
tion of  wealth,  and  ultimately  increases  the  public 
MShusfaidL  treasure  instead  of  diminishing  it.  It  is  happen- 
ing under  our  very  eyes  in  Germany  and  England, 
where  public  wealth  has  increased  side  by  side  with  the  popula- 
tion. In  Germany,  in  a  period  of  nine  years  (1872-1881), 
the  average  annual  revenue  of  each  individual  increased  six 
per  cent.,  while  the  population  rolled  up  by  millions.  The 
economical  doctrine  which  regards  overpopulation  as  the 
principal  cause  of  poverty  is  a  very  superficial  one.  As  long 
as  there  is  an  available  plot  of  ground  unoccupied,  and  per- 
haps even  after  the  entire  earth  shall  be  cultivated  (for  science 
may  be  able  to  create  new  sources  of  wealth  and  even  of  food) 
a  man  will  always  constitute  a  bit  of  living  capital,  of  a  higher 
value  than  a  horse  or  a  cow,  and  to  increase  the  numbers  of 
citizens  of  a  nation  will  be  to  increase  the  sum  of  its  wealth.' 

'  What  economists  have  really  established,  and  what  MM.  Maurice  Block,  Cour- 
celles-Seneuil,  Paul  Leroy-Beaulieu,  Othenin  d'Haussonville  are  right  in  maintaining, 
is  that  it  is  harmful  to  society  to  add  to  the  non-working  classes,  to  the  number  of 


3l8      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

Formerly  the  struggle  for  existence  between  two  races  or 

nations  ended  in  a  single  violent  crisis:  the  vanquished  were 

massacred     or    reduced   to    slavery,  and    slavery 
Menace  to  , ,  t       i   •         i  11  •         •  r     1 

modern civiliza-      usually  resulted  in   the  gradual  extinction  01  the 

*'°°'  inferior  race  ;    it  was  a  slow   massacre.-    Famine, 

produced  by  methodical  devastation,  achieved  what  war  had 
begun — whole  races  disappeared  abruptly  from  the  face  of  the 
globe  and  left  not  a  trace  behind  :  the  most  recent  and  most 
striking  example  is  that  of  the  great  American  empires  of 
Mexico  and  Peru.  Thus  the  strongest  and  most  intelligent 
races  alone  survived,  and  had  only  to  confirm  their  victory 
with  all  its  consequences  by  clearing  the  earth  before  them. 
Existence  was  a  monopoly  in  the  hands  of  the  strong.  It  is 
no  longer  so.  To-day  the  vanquished  are  no  longer  massa- 
cred ;  on  the  contrary,  when  an  uncivilized  country  is  conquered, 
it  is  supplied  with  good  laws,  with  police  and  hygiene. 
Inferior  races  increase  and  multiply  under  the  rule  of 
superior  races.  The  Cape  negroes,  the  Chinese,  the  negroes 
in  the  United  States,  and  even  the  last  surviving  red-skins, 
who  seem  disposed  to-day  to  take  heart,  are  examples  of 
what  I  mean.  Well,  the  Orient  contains,  in  the  Chinese 
Empire,  a  veritable  reservoir  of  men,  which  some  day  or  other 
will  overflow  the  entire  earth.  In  the  face  of  this  compact 
multitude,  which  is  increasing  rapidly,  and  with  advancing 
civilization  will  increase  more  rapidly,  the  four  or  five  great 

feeble  beings  who  are  incapable  of  labour,  to  the  number  of  beggars,  and  of  non- 
combatants  generally,  whoever  they  may  be.  Well,  poverty  favours  the  birth  of 
those  who  are  dependent  upon  society,  and  the  birth  of  those  who  are  dependent 
upon  society  tends  still  further  to  increase  poverty  ;  that  is  the  circle  from  which 
so  many  economists  have  believed  that  the  precepts  of  Malthus  offered  them  an 
issue.  Unhappily,  if  there  is  one  universal  attribute  of  poverty,  it  is  its  fertility  ; 
for  in  all  nations  the  poorest  classes  are  those  that  have  the  greatest  number  of 
children.  Malthus  has  never  been  listened  to  by  the  poorer  classes,  but  precisely 
by  those  only  who,  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  sagacious  political  economy,  ought 
to  be  encouraged  to  leave  as  many  children  behind  them  as  possible,  because  they 
alone  would  educate  them  well  :  that  is  to  say,  the  economical  peasantry  and  the 
prosperous  middle  class.  Insomuch  that  a  fertility  of  the  poor  is  absolutely  with- 
out remedy  (except  by  way  of  charity  or  emigration)  ;  but  it  constitutes  in  the  end 
a  much  less  considerable  evil  than  the  infertility  of  a  nation  as  a  whole,  and  is  an 
ultimate  evil  only  because,  in  the  last  analysis,  it  results  in  a  genuine  unproductivity. 
Poverty,  especially  in  the  cities,  rapidly  kills  out  the  most  prolific  races. 


POPULATION  AND    THE  FUTURE   OF   THE  RACE.       319 

nations  of  Europe,  and  the  United  States  and  Australia,  seem 
a  small  matter.  The  future  of  humanity  depends  mathemati- 
cally upon  the  proportions  in  which  the  more  intelligent  races 
are  represented  in  the  complex  composition  of  the  man  of 
the  future.  And  every  son  of  one  of  the  more  highly 
endowed  races  of  the  globe,  such  as  the  French,  German,  or 
English,  commits  a  positive  fault  in  not  labouring  for  the  multi- 
plication of  his  race;  he  contributes  to  lower  the  future  level  of 
human  intelligence.  Men  of  science  have  already  established 
it  as  a  law  that  the  power  of  reproduction  decreases  with  the 
increase  of  cerebral  activity,  and  that  intelligent  races  repro- 
duce themselves  with  increasing  difificulty  ;  to  augment  this 
natural  difficulty  by  a  voluntary  restriction  is  daily  to  labour 
for  the  brutalization  of  the  human  race. 

The  followers  of  iMalthus,  supposing  that  there   at  present 
exists  an  equilibrium  between   population  and   the  means  of 

subsistence,   look  with  anxiety  upon  every  new 
Duty  of  civilized  ^^^j^^j  j^^  ^j^^   ^^^^.j^      ^^^    ^^^^^^    admitting  that 

races  to  mtiltipiy,  '  o 

the  struggle  for  existence  has  already  reached 
that  acute  stage,  it  might  still  be  hoped  that  only  the  more 
intelligent  would  leave  children  behind  them.  ^lalthus'  law 
should  possess  no  force  for  the  educated  men  of  Europe,  who 
alone  are  acquainted  with  it,  but  only  for  the  negroes  or  the 
Chinese,  who  are  absolutely  ignorant  of  it.  Malthus'  law  is  not 
meant  for  us  ;  in  reality  it  is  not  meant  for  anyone.  By  the 
very  fact  that  one  is  acquainted  with  it,  and  possesses 
foresight  and  self-control  enough  to  put  it  into  practice,  one 
proves  that  one  stands  beyond  the  circle  of  its  applicability. 
Malthusians,  who  endeavour  to  apply  to  the  reproduction  of 
mankind  the  principles  of  animal-breeders,  forget  that  the 
dominant  principle  iti  all  breeding  is  to  favour  the  multiplica- 
tion of  the  superior  species.  One  Durham  bull  is  worth  ten 
common  bulls.  What  is  true  of  bulls  and  sheep  is  true  of  men  : 
a  Frenchman,  with  the  scientific  and  aesthetic  aptitude  of  his 
race,  represents  on  the  average  a  social  capital  a  hundred  times 
greater  than  that  represented  by  a  negro,  an  Arab,  a  Turk,  a 
Cossack,  or  a  Chinaman.  To  leave  few  French  descendants,  in 
order  that  Cossacks  and  Turks  may  increase  and  multiply,  is 


320      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

to  commit  an  absurdity,  even  on  the  principles  of  a  Mal- 
thusian.  Be  it  remembered  that  it  was  among  the  Aryans, 
and  in  especial  among  the  Greeks,  that  science  and  art 
worthy  of  the  name  took  their  rise  ;  from  them  they  passed 
to  the  other  Aryans,  and  then  to  the  other  human  races. 

Michelet    compares    the    treasure    of    science    and    truth, 

amassed  by  the  human  mind,  to  the  egg  that  a  slave  carried  in- 

„  ,  to  the  Roman  circus,  at  the  end  of   the  entertain- 

Bad  outlook 

for  the  future.  ment,  into  the  midst  of  the  great  lions,  who  were 
gorged  and  asleep.  If  one  of  the  wild  beasts 
opened  his  eyes  and  was  seized  once  more  by  desire  at  sight 
of  the  man  with  the  egg,  which  is  the  symbol  of  human  genius, 
the  slave  was  lost.  In  our  times  genius  is  infinitely  less  perse- 
cuted than  heretofore,  and  is  no  longer  in  danger  of  the  arena 
or  of  the  headsman,  and  it  seems  as  if  the  sacred  egg  out  of 
which  the  future  is  to  arise  has  nothing  further  to  fear;  but 
this  is  a  mistake.  Precisely  because  the  human  mind  is  year  by 
year  growing  richer,  its  treasure  is  becoming  so  considerable,  so 
delicate,  and  difificult  to  preserve  in  its  entirety,  that  it  may 
well  be  asked  whether  a  succession  of  people  sufificiently  well 
endowed  will  arise  to  retain  and  to  augment  the  acquisitions  of 
science.  Up  to  the  present  day  those  truths  alone  have  sur- 
vived the  wear  and  tear  of  time  which  were  simple  ;  at  the  pres- 
ent epoch  the  rapidity  of  the  progress  of  science  may  well  make 
us  anxious  as  to  its  permanence.  The  extreme  complexity  of 
science  may  well  make  us  fear  that  the  peoples  of  the  future 
may  not  possess  mental  elevation  enough  to  embrace  it  in  its 
entirety,  and  to  add  to  it  by  a  constant  increase.  Suppose,  for 
example,  that  the  world  should  be  reduced  abruptly  to  Africa, 
Asia,  and  South  America,  where  the  Spanish  race  has  not  yet 
produced  a  single  scientific  genius;  must  not  the  scientific 
labours  of  our  century  inevitably  miscarry  ?  Happily  their 
safety  is  bound  up  with  that  of  certain  great  nations.  The 
Anglo-Saxon  and  Germanic  peoples  to-day  cover  the  earth 
with  their  children  and  their  colonies.  But  it  is  sad  to  think 
that  one  of  the  three  or  four  great  European  peoples,  which 
alone  count  for  much  in  the  progress  of  humanity,  should  be 
dancing  gaily  toward  annihilation. 


POPULATION^  AND    THE  FUTURE   OF    THE  RACE.       321 

A  t  usion  of  races  will  sooner  or  later  take  place  in  humanity  ; 
it  is  already  takin<^  place  in  the  United  States,  and  the  perfec- 
tion of  means  of  communication  is  hastening  its 
^3i^^  consummation      throughout    the      entire    world. 

Euroi)e  is  pouring  out  its  surplus  upon  iVmerica, 
Africa,  and  Australia ;  Asia  will  some  day  overflow  Europe 
and  America  ;  what  is  taking  place  to-day,  fifty  years  after  the 
invention  of  railways,  can  scarcely  give  us  an  idea  of  the 
mixture  and  amalgamation  of  races  which  will  some  day  be 
realized  on  the  earth.  Such  a  mixture,  even  though  it  raise 
the  level,  in  some  small  degree,  of  races  intellectually  ill- 
endowed,  may  well  abase  the  level  of  races  intellectually 
well-endowed,  if  the  latter  are  greatly  outnumbered  by  the 
former. 

It    may  be   objected,  it  is  true,  that   the  superior   races  of 

mankind  may  remain  isolated  in  the  midst  of  the  multiplica- 

^,  tion  of  the  other  branches  of  humanity  in  a  sort 

Money  the  •' 

modern  patent  of    of   jealous  aristocracy,  served  and    respected  by 
nobihty.  those  whom   they  dominate  by  their  intelligence. 

This  is  one  of  the  dreams  of  M.  Renan,  who  sees  in  the 
Chinese  the  future  slave  of  the  Europeans — gentle,  docile  slaves, 
with  just  enough  intelligence  to  be  marvellous  industrial 
machines.  Unhappily  we  have  learned,  to  our  expense,  that 
the  Chinese  are  also  excellent  instruments  of  war.  In  the 
industrial  society  in  which  we  live,  money  constitutes,  in  the 
long  run,  the  basis  of  aristocracy.  To-day  money  is  the  true 
force  and  title  of  nobility.  To  lay  up  treasures  demands  a 
very  average  intelligence,  of  which  a  great  number  of  inferior 
people  are  no  doubt  capable  ;  once  rich  and  they  will  be  our 
equals;  richer,  they  will  be  our  superiors  and  our  masters. 
If  they  have  money  enough  they  can  purchase  every  privilege, 
even  that  of  mixing  their  blood  w'ith  ours,  even  that  of  marry- 
ing our  daughters  and  of  confounding  our  race  and  theirs. 
The  only  means  by  which  intelligence  can  preserve  its  power 
is  by  means  of  numbers.  Genius  itself  must  leave  a  posterity 
behind  it,  and  in  spite  of  prejudice  to  the  contrary,  if  we  are  , 
to  be  eternal  it  must  be  by  means  of  our  children  rather  than  7 
bv  our  works. 


32  2      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

Positivists  propose  to  substitute  a  religion  of  humanity  for 
existing  and  rapidly  disappearing  religions  ;  there  is  a  still 
more  accessible  religion,  and  more  practical,  and 
famnyf°'^°  *  ®  more  useful,  which  was  one  of  the  first  religions 
of  humanity:  the  religion  of  the  family,  the  wor- 
ship of  the  little  group  of  beings  bound  together  by  ties  of 
blood  and  memory  and  name  and  honour,  which  form  an 
epitome  of  a  nation  ;  to  permit  one's  family  to  die  out  or  to 
diminish  in  number  is  to  labour,  to  the  extent  that  in  one  lies, 
to  diminish  the  power  of  one's  native  country  and  of  humanity 
itself.  Patriotism  has  been  made  a  subject  of  ridicule,  but 
patriotism  is  a  beautiful  thing,  and  befitting  in  the  head  of  a 
household.  Paternity  in  its  completest  sense,  that  is  to  say, 
the  responsibility  for  the  education  of  a  new  generation  from 
birth  to  the  age  of  manhood,  is,  after  all,  the  surest  element  of 
patriotism,  and  is  within  the  reach  of  everyone. 

In  France  especially,  as  we  have  seen,  the  population  question 

is  an  important  one,  and  should   be  insisted   on.     It  has  been 

„    ,    , .  said  with  reason  that  France  to-day  is  not  threat- 

Gradual  im-  J 

poverishmont  of  ened  by  a  multitude  of  dangers,  but  by  one  onh', 
which  actually  constitutes  a  national  peril :  that 
of  extinction  from  lack  of  children.'  A  nation  may  increase 
its  capital  in  two  ways;  i.  By  productive  expenditure  and 
productive  labour;  2.  By  the  utmost  possible  diminution 
of  both,  of  labour  and  of  expenditure.  France  has  been  em- 
ploying the  second  means  since  the  beginning  of  the  present 
century  ;  she  has  been  economizing  in  children  and  diminish- 
ing the  rapidity  of  the  circulation  of  national  life.  She  has, 
by  this  process,  amassed  a  great  treasure,  but  the  results  of 
her  economy  have  been  in  part  consecrated  to  the  payment  of 
an  indemnity  of  five  billions,  and  in  part  to  loans,  as  in  Mexico, 
Turkey,  and  Egypt,  and  to  speculation  of  every  .kind,  and  the 
result  of  these  blind  economies  has  been  a  gradual  impoverish- 
ment. 

Over  and  above  those  who  are  unreflective,  or  who  simply 
trust  to  luck,  there  exists  no  considerable  class  of  people  in 
France,  except  Catholics,  Protestants,  and  Jews,  who  can  be 
counted  on    to   maintain   the   race.     There  exists  no  doubt  a 

'  M.   Richet. 


POP  U LA  no X  AND    THE  FUTURE    OF    THE  RACE.       323 

certain  number  of  bons  vivants  who  are  determined  to  take 
their  pleasure   at  all   hazards,  and  who  find  in  the  restriction 

Classes  in  France  ^^  ^^'^  ^^"^^1^  ^  limitation  of  their  pleasure;  but 
that  maintain  the  they  are  rare.  The  disciples  of  Malthus  are 
popu  ation.  nowadays  much  more  numerous  than   those    of 

Rabelais,  People  who  have  children,  not  out  of  pleasure  nor 
by  chance,  but  out  of  patriotism  and  philosophy,  are  so  rare 
that  they  need  not  at  present  be  taken  into  account.  The  more 
the  property  in  France  is  subdivided,  the  greater  the  number 
of  small  proprietors,  the  fewer  children  there  are.  Since  1866 
the  agricultural  iiu[uiry  has  demonstrated  the  invasion  of 
Malthusianism  and  the  progressof  voluntary  infertility  in  almost 
every  department  side  by  side  with  the  subdivision  of  the  soil. 
From  that  time  on  the  movement  has  gone  forward  unchecked. 
"  In  certain  communes  the  words  brother  and  sister  have 
almost  fallen  out  of  use.  Primogeniture,  which  was  abolished 
in  1789,  has  been  replaced  by  unigcniturc."  '  Labourers  only 
are  anti-malthusians,  and  that  out  of  carelessness  for  the  future. 
A  Alalthusian  was  one  day  remonstrating  with  a  poor  labourer, 
who  was  the  father  of  twelve  children  and  ambitious  to  become 
the  father  of  a  thirteenth.  "  What  will  you  have.'"  said  the 
latter,  "it  is  the  only  pleasure  in  the  world  that  I  get  for 
nothing  ;   I  would  not  diminish  it  on  any  account." 

It  has  been  maintained  that  a  greater  or  less  restriction  of 
the  number  of  births  is  essentially  due,  not  to  a  diminution  in. 

Power  of  the  religious  devotion  of  the  people,  but  simply 

relirrion to stimu-    to  an    increase  of  prudence.     Whoever  docs  not 

late  population.        ,..,., 

live  Simply  m  the  present  moment,  but  takes 
account  of  the  future,  will  restrict  the  number  of  his  children 
according  to  the  figure  of  his  income.  And  yet  where  faith 
is  sincere  and  rigid,  it  does  not  permit  one  to  hesitate  on 
mere  grounds  of  economics.  In  Brittany  prudence  neither 
checks  religion  nor  fertility.  Engaged  couples,  knowing  that 
the}'  will  have  children  after  marriage,  postpone  their  union 
till  they  shall  have  laid  by  a  certain  amount  of  monc}-,  pur- 
chased a  house  and  a  plot  of  ground.  In  the  department  of 
Ille-et-Vilaine,  men  do  not  generally  become  engaged  before 
their  twenty-fourth  year,  nor  women  before  their  nineteenth 

'  Toubeaii,  La  Repartition  des  imp6ts,  t.  ii. 


324      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

year.  Marriage  does  not  last  as  long  therefore  in  Brittany  as 
in  Normandy  ;  it  lasts  on  the  average  twenty-seven  years  and 
a  half  in  Normandy  and  twenty-one  in  l^rittany,  and  yet  the 
fertility  of  the  women  of  Brittany,  as  compared  with  that  of 
the  women  of  Normandy,  is  almost  as  that  of  a  hundred  to 
sixty.  In  Brittany  tiie  result  of  religion  and  prudence,  before 
marriage,  combined,  is  a  constant  increase  of  population  ;  in 
Normandy  the  effect  of  incredulity  and  prudence,  after  mar- 
riage, combined,  is  a  constant  diminution  of  the  population;^ 
although,  of  the  two  peoples,  the  Normans  are  more  vigorous, 
and  owing  to  the  greater  frequency  of  twins,  naturally  more 
fertile.' 

The  weakness  of  the  French  as  a  nation  does  not  lie  in  the 

smallness  of  the  number  of  marriages.     Practically  the  average 

Condition  of        number  of  marriages  in  France  is  the  same  as  in 

population  in  Germany,  something  like  eight  a  year  for  every 
France  not  due  to  -^ '  ^  ,      ^  .  , 

aversion  to  thousand  inhabitants,  so  that  marriages  are  about 

marriage.  ^^  frequent  in  France  as  elsewhere.     There  is  no 

question  of  immorality  involved,  but  simply  one  of  the  prudence 
of  married  people.  Illegitimate  births  are  less  numerous  in 
France  than  in  Italy  or  in  Germany  and  in  especial  in  Catholic 
Germany.  In  Paris  scarcely  more  than  twenty-five  per  cent. 
of  the  children  are  illegitimate,  at  Osmultz  in  Moravia  fully 
seventy  per  cent,  are  illegitimate.  M.  Bertillon  has  estab- 
lished the  fact  that,  since  the  beginning  of  the  century,  the 
percentage  of  marriage  has  been  maintained,  and  even  has 
increased  rather  than  diminished  up  to  1865  ;  but  that  the 
percentage  of  births  has  diminished  continuously,  and  regu- 
larly. According  to  statistics  every  marriage  averages  five 
children  in  Germany,  five  in  England,  or  almost  five,  and  three 
only  in  France. 

Certain  thinkers  have  been  inclined  to  believe  that  the  com- 
parative slowness  in  the  increase  of  the  French  people  was  due 

Nor  to  degree  of  ^^   a  relatively    high   development  of  the  brain. 
civilization  in        We  have  already  remarked  the  antagonism  which 

ranee.  exists  between   reproduction    and   the    develop- 

ment  of  the  nervous  or  cerebral   system,  but  it  is  somewhat 
precipitate  to  apply  to  a  special  group  of  men  what  is  true  of 
■  See  M.  Baudrillart,  Les  Populations  r urates  de  la  Bretagne. 


population:  and  the  future  of  the  race.     325 

the  species  as  a  whole  ;  and  there  is  a  touch  of  fatuity  in  the 
notion  that  the  French  people  have  achieved  so  high  a  point 
of  development  that  there  exists  in  certain  provinces  not  only 
a  decrease  in  the  rate  of  reproduction,  but  an  absolute 
decrease  of  population.  A  statistical  investigation  has  shown, 
it  is  true,  that  members  of  the  Institute  do  not  average  more 
than  one  or  two  children  apiece,  but  this  statistical  inquiry 
proves  simply  that  members  of  the  Institute  have  not  desired 
to  have  large  families,  and  that  their  conduct,  which  is 
generally  not  influenced  by  religion,  has  been  comformable  to 
their  desire.  An  ordinarily  healthy  man  could  become  the 
father  of  a  hundred  children  every  year  ;  and  to  imagine  that  his 
sexual  needs  diminish  under  the  influence  of  intellectual  labour 
to  the  extent  of  his  having  but  one  child  in  forty  years  would 
be  more  apropos  in  a  comic  opera  than  in  a  serious  book. 
Remark,  however,  that  the  fertility  is  less  great  among  peasants, 
whose  cerebral  activity  is  at  a  minimum,  than  in  our  cities,  in 
which  it  is  relatively  great  ;  but  in  cities  fertility  is  balanced 
unhappily  by  mortality.  The  antagonism  between  fertility 
and  development  of  the  brain  should  be  at  its  greatest  in 
women  ;  but  Frenchwomen,  whose  education  has  long  been 
neglected,  do  not  appear  to  possess  on  the  average  any  intel- 
lectual superiority  over  the  women  of  other  countries.  And 
in  our  provinces  population  advances  most  slowly  in  Nor- 
mandy, where  the  women  are  so  vigorous  that  the  percentage 
of  twins  is  higher  than  elsewhere. 

Malthusianism  therefore  is  the  cause  of  the  evil,  and  mal- 

thusianism  is  a  worse  scourge  than  pauperism  ;  it  is  in  a  sense 

the  pauperism  of  the  middle  classes.     Just  as  an 

Malthusianism     excessive  impoverishment  may  kill  out  a  whole 

the  cause.  ^  •         1         1        1         r     1 

social  class,  malthusianism  is  the  death  of  the 
middle  classes.  It  is  rare  to  find  a  middle-class  family 
with  more  than  two  or  three  children  ;  two  children,  at  least, 
are  necessary  to  replace  the  father  and  the  mother,  and  to 
maintain  the  population  ;  a  certain  number  of  celibates  and  of 
married  people  who  are  sterile  must  be  allowed  for.  The 
middle  classes  therefore  are  approaching  extinction  :  the  result 
of  restricting  their  number  is  suicide. 


3=6      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

To  sum  up,  the  population  question  in  France  is  purely  and 
simply  a  moral  question  ;  but  more  than  any  other  question 
of  the  like  nature  it  is  closely  bound  up  with  religion  because, 
up  to  the  present  time,  religion  has  been  the  sole  power  which 
has  dared  to  check  popular  inclination  in  this  regard.  It  is 
in  respect  to  population  that  lay  morality  has  been  most 
negligent. 

II.  If  the  question  is  really  one  of  a  return  to  some  tradi-^ 

tional  religion  or  a  gradual  extinction  of  the  race,  free-thinkers 

may  well  hesitate  between  a  number  of  lines  of 

Futility  of  ef-  •  \         a      .         ^  ^ 

fort  to  bring  about  conduct.     They    may,    m    the    hrst    place,    take 

areturnofre-        refupfe  in  resignation:    "  After  me  the  Deluge." 
ligion.  ,  ,  , 

Many  of  the  middle  classes  and  a  great  number 

even  of  economists,  who  regard  the  future  of  their  race  and 
of  their  country  as  much  too  distant  to  be  taken  into  account 
and  consider  present  comfort  as  the  sole  rational  aim  of  man, 
accept  this  position.  A  more  radical  alternative  is  to  join  the 
Church  :  both  the  Catholic  and  the  Protestant  churches,  in  spite 
of  the  eccentricity  of  their  legends,  are  useful  as  an  aid  in  mak- 
ing a  nation  numerous  and  strong  and  prolific  ;  and  the  French 
of  all  nations  needs  religion,  so  that,  instead  of  endeavouring  to 
destroy  the  Christian  faith,  it  is  our  duty  to  endeavour  to 
propagate  it.  There  is  an  element  of  hypocrisy  and  even 
of  cowardice  in  this  effort  to  revive  a  bygone  error  in  the 
name  of  present  utility.  And  it  involves  the  afTfirmation  that 
error  is  at  the  bottom  more  useful  than  truth,  and  that  truth 
is  fundamentally  irreconcilable  with  the  continued  existence 
of  the  human  race — an  affirmation  which  is  somewhat  pre- 
cipitate. Above  all,  the  effort  to  arrest  scepticism  is  simply 
futile — futile  for  humanity,  for  a  people,  for  a  family.  When 
it  is  time  to  regret  that  certain  things  have  been  learned  it  is 
too  late  to  set  about  ignoring  them.  The  French  people,  in 
especial,  possess  a  fund  of  incredulity  which  is  based  upon  the 
practical  and  logical  character  of  their  temperament :  they  rose 
in  1789  against  the  clergy,  in  the  name  of  liberty;  nowadays 
they  will  struggle  with  the  same  stubbornness  in  the  name  of 
comfort  against  the  prescriptions  of  religion,  against  the  very 


POPULATION  AND    THE   FUTURE    OF    THE  RACE.       327 

instincts  of  human  nature,  and  will  make  themselves  sterile 
in  order  to  become  rich  without  immoderate  labour.  The 
re-establishment  of  religion  is  simply  out  of  the  question  ; 
sincerely  religious  men  themselves,  if  they  happen  also  to  be 
intelligent,  recognize  it.  This  rational  sterility,  produced  by 
a  triumph  of  the  intellect  over  natural  instinct  and  religious 
dogma,  is  a  charming  theme  for  declamation  ;  but  declama- 
tion is  also  sterile,  and  does  not  date  from  yesterday  ;  it  was 
tried  before  the  Revolution  and  succeeded  neither  in  augment- 
ing religious  sensibility  nor  in  diminishing  French  infertility. 
In  a  pamphlet  on  the  Erreurs  de  Voltaire,  the  Abbe  Nonotte 
wrote  in  1766  :  "  Present  notions  and  practices  on  the  subject 
of  population  are  as  melancholy  for  morality  as  for  statesman- 
ship. People  are  content  nowadays  with  a  single  heir.  Pleas- 
ure and  libertinism  carry  the  day.  The  fortunes  of  a  great 
number  of  the  first  families  in  Paris  rest  on  the  shoulders  of 
a  single  child.  It  was  better  in  former  times  ;  for  families 
were  not  afraid  of  a  number  of  children,  and  were  not  so 
extravagant  but  that  they  could  provide  them  with  a-  means  of 
subsistence." 

Neither  the  priest   nor  the  confessor   can  be   counted   on. 

Has  the  priest    ever    power   enough,   even    in    countries  like 

Brittany  where  devotion  is  at  its  height,  to  sup- 

prieTt  tVcope         press  the  grossest  vice  ;  drunkenness,  for  example, 

with  (question  of     and  that,  too,  among  women  ?     How  can  a  priest 

population,  ,  ,  .         .  .     ^ 

be  expected  to  mamtam  an  influence  over  men 
who  confess  hardly  more  than  once  a  year — at  Easter?  How 
can  the  priest,  under  such  circumstances,  be  expected  to 
be  really  a  governor  of  the  conscience,  and  in  especial  a 
physician  of  the  soul?  He  receives  a  general  confession  from 
each  of  his  parishioners,  he  is  in  a  hurry,  he  is  obliged  to 
restrict  his  attention  to  the  most  enormous  of  the  sins  con- 
fessed to  him,  and  the  whole  ends  in  absolution,  followed  by 
communion.  Some  days  afterward  the  men  get  drunk  again, 
and  do  just  as  they  did  before,  till  the  year  comes  round. 
Prejudices  and  habits  are  stronger  than  anything  else. 

They  who,  with  the  Abbe  Nonotte,  regard  religion  as   the 
cure  of  all   evils,    forget  that  religion  itself   is  very  compliant, 


328      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

that  it  can  be  made  to  stand  for  a  multitude  of  things.     If  the 
mass  of  the  French  people  should  allow  themselves  to  be  per- 
suaded by  the  Abbe  Nonotte  and  his  disciples 

Pliancy  of  re-  ,  , .   .  ,    ^    .  ,        ,  .... 

ligion.  to   return  to  the  traditional  faith,  the  traditional 

faith  itself  would  soon  cease  to  be  so  austere. 
Confessors  would  become  more  discreet.  Are  they  not  to-day 
obliged  to  tolerate  polkas  and  waltzes,  and  young  people 
whirling  about  the  room  in  each  other's  arms,  which  was 
formerly  so  severely  prohibited  ?  The  letter  of  religion . 
remains  in  vain  the  same,  the  spirit  of  the  worshippers 
changes.  At  the  present  day  Jesuits  willingly  close  their 
eyes  to  the  sterility  of  the  family ;  they  have  even  been 
accused  of  whispering  to  advice  for  the  preservation  of  certain 
inheritances.  Do  you  imagine  that  confessors  in  the  Fau- 
bourg Saint-Germain  ask  especially  embarrassing  questions  ? 
Heaven  can  be  compromised  with. 

This  sort  of   tolerance,  like   all  tolerance,  will    grow   with 
time.     Even  in  Protestant  families  in  which  a  more  extreme 

rigidity  reigns,  the  spirit  of  the  times  is  dominant. 
Even  of  Protes-   Orthodoxy  is  everywhere  becoming  less  ferocious, 

sterility  is  everywhere  on  the  increase.  Even 
clergymen  do  not  have  as  large  families  as  formerly.  Statis- 
tics on  this  head  would  be  very  instructive;  one  might  find  in 
the  very  bosom  of  Protestantism  sterility  increasing  directly 
with  liberalism  of  belief.  If  Darwin  and  Spencer  have 
partisans  in  the  English  clergy,  and  among  the  American 
Protestants,  why  should  not  Malthus  also?  In  especial,  since 
Malthus  was  a  grave  and  religious  man. 

The  Catholic  religion  has  itself  been  guilty  by  its  advocacy  of 
religious  celibacy.     In  France  one  hundred  and  thirty  thousand 

persons  of  both  se.xes  are  devoted  to  celibacy.' 

IjPPTP3.9P  of 

population  en-        It    is    to    be    regretted    that    Catholicism,   which 

couraged  by  the     during  a  number  of  centuries  (in  the  time  when 
Catholic  Churcli.      „       ^f,       .  ah-         •  i  •     i  r    ^i 

St.   Sidonius   Apollinans,   the    son-in-law    ot    the 

Emperor  Avitus,  was    Bishop  of   Clermont-Ferrand)  did    not 

impose   celibacy  upon   ecclesiastics,  should   have  felt   obliged 

later  to  exact  it,  and  should  have  come  to  consider  absolute 

'  Dr.  Lagneau,  Remarques  dhnographiques  stir  le  ce'libat  eti  France. 


POPULATION  AND    THE  FUTURE    OF   THE  RACE.       329 

continence  superior  to  marriage,  contrary  to  all  physiologi- 
cal and  psychological  laws.  "  Continence  as  a  profession," 
says  Vl.  Montesquieu,  "  has  destroyed  more  men  than  pesti- 
lence and  war  together.  Every  religious  house  constitutes  a 
family  which  never  gives  birth  to  a  child,  and  which  continues 
in  existence  only  by  adopting  children  from  without.  Such 
houses  are  open  like  so  many  abysses,  to  swallow  up  the  future 
of  the  race."  Religious  celibacy  results  in  another  evil  con- 
sequence :  although  priests  do  not  to-day  constitute  the  elite 
of  society,  they  are  still  among  the  most  intelligent,  the  best 
educated,  the  least  ill-disposed  members  of  society.  And  they 
gaily  consent  to  be  annihilated,  to  disappear,  and  to  leave,  like 
the  heretics  they  used  to  burn,  no  trace  behind.  They  form 
as  constant  a  drain  on  the  body-politic  as  the  victims  of  the 
Inquisition  formed  during  so  many  years  in  Spain.  If  we 
should  count  the  sons  only  of  clergymen  who  have  become 
distinguished  or  even  great  men,  from  Linnaeus  to  Wurtz  and 
Emerson,  we  might  see  how  much  we  lose  by  the  celibacy  of 
our  priesthood. 

But  religion  apart,  sterility  may  be  combated  by  law,  by 
morals,  and  by  education. 

Religion  is  the  law  of  primitive  peoples  ;  when  it  becomes 

feeble,  its  precepts  split  into  two  parts  :  one  of  which,  regarded 

,     ,       \        as  useless,  is  neglected  and  loses  its  entire  value, 
Legal  remedy.  ,       ,    .  ,     ,  1 

while  the  other,  which  is  regarded  as  the  guarantee 

of  social  life,  becomes  formulated  into  moral  or  civilized  laws 
obligatory  in  character.  This  is  the  history  of  a  number  of 
hygienic  measures  prescribed  by  Oriental  religion  which  have 
become  simple  police  regulations  in  the  iaws  of  modern 
Europe.  In  the  present  question  it  is  evident  that  the  law- 
should  take  the  place  that  religion  once  held  ;  the  legislator 
should  assume  the  function  of  the  priest.  Such  a  substitution 
is  not  unexampled;  it  took  place  among  the  Greeks;  the 
citizen  was  obliged,  by  law,  to  have  children.  Socrates  in 
Athens  was  obliged  by  law  to  take  a  second  wife.  In  Sparta 
the  young  husband  lived  at  the  public  table  until  he  had  sup- 
plied the  state  with  three  sons.  He  was  subject  to  military 
service  until  he  had  supplied  the  state  with  four.'      Nowadays 

'  Aristotle,  Politica,  ii.  6,  13. 


33°      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

of  course  such   radical  laws  are   not    to  be  thought   of,  and 
indeed  no  simple   and    direct  law    could    reach    the    evil  ;  an 
entire  system  of  mutually  completing  laws  is  necessary.     The 
whole  series  of  reasons  which  prevent  the  head  of  a  household 
from  having  a  large  family  must   first  be  known  ;  then   they 
must  be  met  in  detail  by  a  series  of  laws  devised  to  suppress 
them  or  counterbalance  them  ;  so  that  whenever  one  interest 
makes  for  sterility,  another  and  equivalent  interest  shall  make 
for  fertility.     It  is  accordingly  in  the  very  bosom  of  the  family 
that  the  law,  and  that  progressive  reform  of  morals  to  which 
the  law  is  so  capable  of  contributing,  must  operate. 
*^»       The  head  of  a  family  to-day  abandons  the  notion  of  having 
. ^"^^  many  children  for  a  number  of   reasons,  sometimes  mutually 
^    ,.    ,  contradictory,   which    it    is  necessary  we    should 

comfort  a  reason      make  ourselves  fully  acquainted  with  before  en- 

for  small  families,      i  •„*-]■.„  c  l  ,.■ 

deavouring  to  devise  means  oi  counteractmg 
them.  There  exist  in  the  first  place,  though  not  very  frequently, 
physical  reasons  :  the  ill-health  of  the  mother,  the  fear  of 
her  dying  through  frequent  pregnancies.  When  this  fear  is 
justified  in  the  judgment  of  a  physician  it  is  respectable  ;  it  is 
defensible  even  from  the  point  of  view  of  society,  for  children 
born  under  such  conditions  would  be  delicate  and  useless  as 
members  of  society.  But  in  almost  the  whole  number  of 
cases,  the  grounds  of  sterility  are  economical  and  egoistic. 
French  sterility  is  an  economical,  much  more  than  a  physio- 
logical phenomenon.  The  head  of  a  family  calculates  the 
cost  of  rearing  a  numerous  family,  calculates  that  instead  of 
being  able  to  lay  by  money  while  he  is  in  the  vigour  of  his 
life,  he  will  have  to  spend  it  on  his  children,  and  to  pass  his 
old  age  in  poverty  ;  having  a  large  family  he  regards  simply 
as  a  bit  of  prodigality.  Our  budget  of  4,200,000,000  repre- 
sents an  average  of  113  francs  a  head;  with  such  taxes, 
decidedly,  if  one  is  to  bring  up  a  numerous  family,  one  must 
have  a  considerable  fortune  or  must  deftly  manipulate  one's 
poverty. 

Also  the  small  proprietor  regards  the  earth  somewhat  as  a 
savage  does  his  fetich  :  his  field,  his  house,  are  sacred  entities 
w^hich  he  wishes  to  confide  to  sure  hands.     If  he  has  a  number 


POPULATIOX  AND    THE   FUTURE    OF    THE   RACE.       Zl^ 

of  children,  it  will   be  necessary  to  share  these  treasures  and 

perhaps  to  sell  them  in  case  they  cannot  otherwise  be  divided 

equally.     The    peasant  no  more  regards   such  a 

Worship  of  land   jiyi^io,-i  of  property  as  possible  than  a  gentleman 
another.  ^       ^         ■'  ^  ,. 

under   the   old   regime  would  have  admitted  the 

possibility  of  selling  his  ancestral  chateau.  Both  of  them 
would  regard  a  mutilation  of  their  family  as  a  less  evil  than 
the  mutilation  of  their  domain.  But  to  rear  a  child  is  to 
create  a  bit  of  capital,  and  fertility  is  a  form  of  social  economy. 
Both  economists  and  French  peasants  admit  willingly  that  to 
rear  a  calf  or  a  sheep  is  to  add  to  one's  wealth,  and  a  fortiori 
they  should  admit  that  to  rear  a  child  is.  But  there  is  a  differ- 
ence :  the  calf,  once  reared,  labours  solely  for  the  person  who 
reared  it,  whereas  the  child  ultimately  comes  to  labour  for 
itself.  From  the  selfish  point  of  view  of  the  father,  it  is  better 
to  raise  cattle  and  sheep.  From  the  point  of  view  of  society, 
it  is  incontestably  better  to  rear  men.  In  all  new  countries 
the  French  race  is  prolific,  because  a  large  number  of  children 
under  such  circumstances  is  not  a  charge  but  a  profitable 
investment.  In  Canada  sixty  thousand  Frenchmen  have 
grown  into  a  people  of  two  millions  and  a  half.  In  Algeria  the 
birth-rate  is  from  30  to  35  per  lOOO  ;  in  Normandy  it  is  not  20 
per  thousand.  Finally,  a  striking  example  of  the  influence  of 
emigration  has  been  discovered  in  France  itself,  in  the  Depart- 
ment  of  the  Basses-Pyrenees,  where  the  birth-rate  varies  with 
the  rate  of  emigration,  to  fill  the  places  of  those  who  have  gone 
to  America. 

Let  us  consider,  on  the  other  hand,  the  causes  which   influ- 
ence women.     It  is  natural  that,  in  a  certain   stage  of  society, 
^         ,  women    should    be     unwilling    to    be    mothers. 

W  omen  of  i  i  1         i   ■    i     • «.    • 

fashion  imitate  Motlierhood  represents  the  sole  task  which  it  is 
the  demi-monde,      j^f^  ^^  ^1^^^^^   ^^   perform,  and   this  task  they  find 

the  harder  because  fortune  has  relieved  them  of  every  other. 
They  are  not  even  obliged  to  nourish  their  children  :  the 
maternal  breast  can  find  a  substitute  ;  they  are  not  obliged 
either  to  rear  their  children  or  to  teach  them  :  governesses 
can  be  hired  ;  but  nobody  can  give  birth  to  their  children,  and 
in  their  life  of   frivolity  childbirth    is  the  one   serious  function 


332      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

that  remains.  They  protest  against  it  and  they  are  right. 
The  ambition  of  women  of  the  grandmonde  being  too  often^ 
as  has  been  said,  to  mimic  women  of  the  denii-viojidc,  it  is 
well  that  they  should  imitate  them  in  this  respect  as  in 
all  others,  and  that  they  should  endeavour  to  establish 
between  marriage  and  prostitution  this  final  bond  of  simi- 
larity— sterility. 

Even  among  the  women  of  the  people  gestation  and  child- 
birth, being,   as   they   are,    painful,   are    also   objects   of    tjie 
„         .  ,        liveliest  repugnance  and  of  protestations  of  every 
lower  classes         kind.     I  have  never  seen  a  woman  of  the  people 
ear  a  our.  y^-\\o  did  not  complain  at  being  pregnant  and  who- 

would  not  have  preferred  any  other  malady.  Ah  !  Nous  ne 
faisons pas,  nous  reccvons — "  We  w^omen  have  no  voice  in  the 
matter,"  said  one  of  them  to  me — "  if  but  we  had  !  "  She  epito- 
mized in  a  word  the  physiological  and  psychological  position 
of  the  poor  woman.  Those  who  have  not  had  children,  far 
from  complaining  of  it,  congratulate  themselves,  and  in  any 
event  they  rarely  desire  more  than  one. 

In  Picardy  and  in   Normandy,  as  M.  Baudrillart  remarks,  a 

woman  who  has  many   children  is  made  the   butt   of  raillery. 

And  if  other  provinces  are  less  sterile,  it  is  owing 

Large  families  ...  .  ,^.  , 

among  the  poor  to  religion  or  to  Ignorance.  1  he  women  have 
traceable  to  ^q^  ye^-  become  acquainted  with  Malthus.     They 

ignorance,  .  -,11 

know  of  but  one  remedy  against  an  evil  that  they 
fear — to  keep  out  of  the  way  of  their  husbands.  The  wife  of 
such  and  such  a  labouring  man  prefers  a  beating  to  the  risk 
of  having  another  child  :  but  as  she  is  the  weaker  she  often 
succeeds  in  bringing  upon  herself  both  the  beating  and  the 
child.  Fear  of  pregnancy  is  more  often  than  is  commonly 
believed  the  cause  of  dissension  in  poor  households,  and  for 
that  matter  in  rich  households  also.  The  instant  a  woman 
reasons,  instead  of  submitting  to  the  law,  she  inevitably  feels 
the  disproportion  that  exists,  for  her,  between  the  pleasures  of 
love  and  the  pains  of  maternity.  She  must  be  supplied  with 
a  new  conception  of  duty,  and  that  not  simply  in  the  way  of  a 
religious  obligation  which  the  husband  can  ridicule  but  of  a 
moral  obligation. 


POPULATION  AND    THE   FUTURE    OF    THE  RACE.       333 

Catholic  education,  as  we  have  ah'eady  remarked,  does  great 
harm  in  rearing  young  girls  in  a  false  modesty,  in  never  speak- 

Girls  should  be     '"^  ^°  ^^^^'"  °^  ^^^  duties  of  marriage  for  fear  of 
educated  for  awakening  their   imagination   in  the  direction  of 

ma  erm  y.  their  future  husband.     The  actual  result  is  pre- 

cisely the  opposite  of  the  calculated  result.  Young  girls  see 
nothing  in  marriage  but  the  future  husband  and  unknown 
pleasures.  They  never  think  of  any  matter  of  painful  duty 
which  they  must  accept  in  advance  ;  they  do  not  consider 
children  as  a  question  of  duty  but  of  necessity  simply,  they 
are  actuated  by  but  one  ambition,  that  of  diverting  themselves. 
Girls  should  be  educated  and  prepared  for  motherhood  ;  our 
present  education  is  adapted  to  the  formation  of  nuns  or  old 
maids,  sometimes  of  courtesans,  for  we  neglect  early  to  inspire 
woman  with  a  feeling  of  duty  for  her  proper  function,  which 
constitutes  also  a  large  portion  of  all  that  is  moral  in  her  life — 
the  duty  of  maternity.  Happily,  married  women  cannot  remain 
sterile  simply  by  wishing  it,  their  husbands  must  become  their 
accomplices  ;  it  is  their  husbands,  who,  in  the  last  resort,  are 
responsible.  If  the  husband,  out  of  complaisance  to  his  wife 
or  to  his  wife's  relatives,  undertakes  to  be  a  Malthusian  malgri 
lui,  he  plays  almost  as  ridiculous  a  role  as  that  of  Georges 
Dandin  :  the  man  who  permits  himself  to  be  dictated  to  in 
the  matter  of  not  having  children  is  almost  as  complaisant  as 
the  man  who  acknowledges  the  children  of  other  people. 

Another  cause  which  explains  the  low   birth-rate  in  France 

is  that  paternal  and  maternal   love  is   more   tender  and  more 

exclusive    there  than    in    other    countries.      The 

Paternal  love  i     r        -i 

tends  to  restrict  r  rench  family,  whatever  may  be  said  to  the  con- 
ctildr^en^^'  °^  trary,  is  much  more  closely  united  than  the  English 
or  (German  family  :).?in  it  a  sort  of  fraternity 
obtains  between  parents  and  children.  Members  of  a  family 
separate  with  regret,  and  the  ideal  of  the  father  is  to  have  so  few 
children  that  he  may  always  keep  them  by  him.  We  are  too 
refined,  too  far  advanced  from  a  state  of  nature,  to  submit  with- 
out suffering  to  the  rupture  which  puberty  naturally  brings 
about  in  the  animal  family,  to  the  flight  of  the  young  bird 
whose  wings  are  grown  ;  we  have  not  the  courage  to  accept  the 


334      DISSOLUTION  OF  KELIGIOXS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

dismemberment  of  the  household,  far  less  to  wish  it  as  a  neces- 
sity and,  on  the  whole,  a  good  thing.  This  affection  has  of 
course  its  egoistic  side,  and  it  is  on  that  side  that  it  results  in 
sterility.  Parents  rear  children  less  for  the  children's  sake 
than  for  their  own. 

Having  thus  passed    in  review  the  principal  causes  which 
restrict  the  number  of  children  in  French  families  let  us  con- 
sider what  influence  law  and  morals  might  exert 
remldiesf^  in  Counteracting  them.     Legal  reforms  should  be 

directed  especially  toward  the  two  following 
points:  i.  Reform  of  the  law  relating  to  filial  duties  (main- 
tenance of  parents) ;  2.  Reform  of  the  law  of  inheritance  ;  3. 
Reform  of  the  military  law,  so  as  to  favour  numerous  families 
and  permit  emigration  to  the  French  colonies. 

Rearing  children  being  a  considerable  trouble  and  expense 

it  is  necessary  that  it  should  be  made  profitable,  that  it  should 

„   be  converted    into  a  species  of  loan   for  a  long 

the  law  does  not      term  of  years.     The  law   can  bring  this  about  in 

sufficiently  pro-      various  ways.     French  legislation  has  protected 

tect  parents  o  j- 

against ingrati-  children  by  a  provision  that  their  fathers  cannot 
*^'^®'  completely  disinherit  them ;  it  should  also  have 

protected  fathers  against  children's  ingratitude.  It  often 
happens,  in  the  country  especially,  that  after  an  aged 
couple  have  reared  a  numerous  generation  they  find  them- 
selves dependent  upon  their  sons  or  upon  their  sons-in-law  and 
are  ill-fed  and  greeted  with  abuse.  The  law  provides  that 
children  must  maintain  their  parents,  no  doubt,  but  mainte- 
nance may  be  supplied  in  a  manner  which  renders  it  little 
better  than  assassination.  The  law  which  has  endeavoured 
to  establish  the  moral  independence  of  the  son  as  against  the 
father  might  well  endeavour  to  establish  on  a  firm  basis  the 
moral  independence  of  the  parents  them.selves.  If  a  father  to- 
day cannot  disinherit  his  son,  is  it  not  shocking  that  a  son 
should  be  able,  in  a  sense,  to  disinherit  his  father — to  accept 
life,  nourishment,  education  from  him  and  to  give  derision, 
abusive  language,  and  sometimes  blows  in  return?  Observers 
who  have  lived  among  the  people,  in  especial  in  country  districts, 
uniformly  bear  witness  to  the  deplorable  situation  of  certain 


POPULATION  AND    THE  FUTURE   OF    THE  RACE.       335 

old  men  who  are  obliged  to  beg  on  the  highroad,  or  of  their 
neighbours,  for  means  of  support  which  are  refused  them  in 
their  own  houses.  The  present  French  law  is  helpless  in 
the  presence  of  filial  ingratitude  which  takes  the  form,  not  of 
overt  act,  but  of  abusive  language  and  disrespectful  conduct. 
It  annuls  a  donation  made  to  an  ungrateful  child,  but  it  cannot 
annul  the  donation  of  life,  and  ungrateful  children  benefit  by 
the  inability.  A  father  should  be  able  to  count  at  least  on 
a  certain  minimum  of  revenue  from  his  children,  whoever 
they  may   be.' 

If,  as   is  probable,  the   principle  of   social    insurance  is   ulti- 
mately   to   prevail,  and    if    a  certain   amount  of    the    regular 

income  of  every  labourer  is  to   be   retained  and 
The  state  owes      i-iUir  ■•         ri-ii  i-i 

parents  a  debt.       ^^^^  ^y  to  form  a  provision  for  his  old  age,  which 

his  employer  or  the  state  will  increase  in  certain 

proportions,  we  believe  that  it  would  be  equitable  to  increase 

the  provision  laid   by   for  the  father  of  a  family  in  a  larger 

ratio  than  the  provision  laid  by  for  a  celibate.     The  father  of  a 

'We  are  not  obliged  here  to  enter  into  details  of  administration.  Perhaps  it 
would  be  no  more  than  just  to  give  parents  their  choice  between  living  with  their 
children,  which  is  often  so  painful,  and  an  annual  sum,  proportional  to  the  salary 
and  resources  of  the  children.  This  sum  might  be  taxed  by  the  state  or  the  com- 
mune, and  paid  by  it  to  the  father.  Every  head  of  a  family  would  at  once  reflect 
that  if  he  some  day  becomes  poor  and  has  but  one  child  he  will  have  but  one 
source  of  income,  whereas,  if  he  has  ten  children,  he  will  have  ten  sources  of  income, 
and  ten  chances  that  one  of  them  may  be  considerable  ;  as  it  would  be  if  any  of 
one's  children  should  have  become  wealthy.  A  numerous  family  would  thus 
constitute  a  guarantee  of  independence  for  the  father ;  on  the  other  hand,  the  more 
he  expended  in  educating  them,  the  greater  chance  he  would  have  of  later  obtaining 
an  equivalent  return  for  it.  In  labouring  for  the  augmentation  of  the  social  capital 
he  would  thus  be  securing  an  insurance  for  his  old  age.  Even  supposing  that  the 
execution  of  a  law  of  this  kind  should  be  difificult,  the  right  of  parents  to  some 
really  active  gratitude  on  the  part  of  their  children  should  be  recognized  and  con- 
secrated formally  by  the  letter  of  the  law,  which  should  prescribe  a  line  of  conduct 
for  children  and  even  fix  a  certain  appropriate  ratio  between  their  income  and  the 
amount  of  their  remittances  to  their  parents.  The  law  should  even  do  what  in  it 
lies  to  efface  from  the  language,  in  especial  in  their  ap]ilicability  to  those  who  have 
generously  fulfilled  their  duties  of  paternity,  the  shameful  words  :  ^tre  a  la  charge 
de  ses  enfants — dependent  on  his  children  for  support ;  the  public  should  be 
made  accustomed  to  consider  this  sort  of  dependence  not  as  an  accident  to  the 
children,  and  as  a  misfortune,  and  almost  a  disgrace,  to  the  parents,  but  as  a 
natural  consequence  of  the  relation  of  parent  and  child. 


33^      DISSOL  UTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IiV  EXISTING  SOCIE  TIES. 

family  having  done  more  for  the  state  than  the  cehbate — hav- 
ing contributed  to  the  state  his  time  and  trouble  and  expense 
in  rearing  certain  members  of  the  new  generation — it  would  be 
legitimate  for  the  state  to  make  a  restitution  to  him  of  some 
small  portion  of  the  money  he  has  laid  out  in  a  disinterested 
manner;  in  a  manner  which  did  not  benefit  him  and  has  bene- 
fited the  state. 

Meanwhile    this   consummation   is  somewhat  distant,    and 
there  is  a  reform  immediately  practicable  :  a  tax  on  celibacy. 

Whenever  this   tax   has   been   mentioned   it   has 
Tax  on  celibacy.    ,  ,         ,  ,  .  ^  .  ,.,.,. 

been  made   the  subject   of  universal  ridicule  ;  it 

has  been  represented,  as  M.  Ch.  Richet  remarked,  as  a  sort  of 

penalty,    a    fine    for    not    being  willing  or  not  being  able  to 

marry.     This    is    a    very    unfair   statement    of    the  case;  the 

measure  would  be  simply  strict  justice.     With  anything  like  an 

equality  in  the  matter  of  fortune  a  celibate  pays  smaller  taxes 

(indirect  taxes,  taxes  on  doors  and  windows,  etc.) ;  and  the  tax 

of  rearing  a  family,  by  which  the  married  man  serves  the  state 

in  a  number  of  ways  at  once,  the  celibate  avoids  altogether. 

The  celibate  therefore  is  an  altogether  privileged  person,  he 

avoids   almost    everything    in  the    way   of  social   duties.     In 

regard  to  all  taxes,  direct  and  indirect,  he  enjoys  dispensations 

which  are  not  without  analogy  to  those  formerly  admitted  to 

priests  and   nobies.     The  same  thing  holds   good  of   married 

people    who    do   not   have   children ;  they  are,   so    to    speak, 

encouraged  by  the  law :  it  is   a  state  of  things  which  should 

not  and  cannot  last. 

By  a  tax  on  celibacy  one  would  simply  be  reverting  to  the 

ideas  of  the  French   Revolution.     The  Revolution  took  care, 

In  principle        by  a  number  of  laws,  to  favour  the  married  man 

identical  with        ^t  the   expense  of    the  unmarried.     Thus    every 

certain  provisions  i-i  i 

at  time  of  Revo-     celibate  was  ranked,  for  purposes  of  taxation,  in 

lution.  a  higher  class  than  that  to  which,  according  to 

his  income,  he  would  have  been  placed  had  he  been  married. 

If  he  demanded  assistance  for  some  of  the  causes  for  which 

assistance  was  granted,  he  would  be  given  but  half  the  amount 

that  a  married  man  in  his  situation  would  have  received  ;  if  he 

was  more  than  thirty  years  old  the  laws  obliged  him  to  pay 


POPULATION  AND    THE  FUTURE   OF    THE  RACE.       337 

twenty-five  per  cent,  additional  to  all  ground  tax ;  the  tax- 
able value  of  his  property  was  estimated  at  fifty  per  cent, 
hieher  than  it  would  otherwise  have  been.  A  manufacturer 
was  obliged  to  declare  whether  he  was  celibate  or  married. 
The  law  considered  every  man  a  celibate  who  was  thirty  years 
old  and  was  not  married,  or  a  widower.' 

Over  and  above  the  special  tax  on  celibacy,  a  more  equitable 

distribution  of  the  tax  on  families  might  be  realized.     As  M. 

Richet  remarks,  if  the  father  of  a  family  cannot 

Parents  should      ,  ..ii         -i-        ^^  .<         j-        ^    ^ 

be  taxed  inversely  be  assisted  by  indirect  taxes,  tne  direct  tax  on 
to  number  of  chil-  \{^^-^  should  at  least  be  inversely  proportional  to 
the  number  of  his  children.""  Not  only  so,  but 
compulsory  road  labour — this  unpopular  tax,  which  consti- 
tutes the  last  vestige  of  the  corvee — might  well  be  suppressed 
entirely  for  the  fathers  of  more  than  four  or  even  of  more 
than  three  children.^ 

'  See  the  Etudes  sur  le  celibat  en  France,  by  Dr.  G.   Lagneau  (Academie  des 
sciences  morales  et  politiques,  p.  835,  1885.) 

'  "  Direct  taxes,"  says  M.  Javal,  "  are  in  a  great  measure  a  tax  on  children  :  com- 
pulsory road  labour  is  forced  on  young  men  before  they  are  adult.  The  tax  on 
doors  and  windows  is  a  tax  on  air  and  light,  the  inconvenience  of  which  increases 
•directly  with  the  increase  in  the  size  of  the  family  and  the  consequent  necessity  of 
occupying  a  larger  apartment.  The  license  itself,  which  applies  to  the  amount  of 
the  rent  of  one's  habitation,  is  in  a  great  measure  proportional  to  the  necessary 
expenses  and  not  to  the  resources  of  the  person  taxed."  {Revue  scientijique ,  No. 
i3,  November  i,  1S84,  p.  567.)  "  It  is  well  known,"  says  M.  Bertillon,  "  that  the 
city  of  Paris  pays  to  the  state  the  tax  on  apartments  that  rent  for  less  than  four  hun- 
dred francs.  In  principle  nothing  could  be  better,  but  in  practice :  suppose  two 
neighbours,  one  of  them  an  unmarried  man,  possesses  a  comfortable  lodging  of  two 
rooms  with  the  accessories  ;  one  of  these  two  rooms  can  scarcely  be  called  a  neces- 
sity for  him  and  is  distinctly  a  simple  addition  to  his  comfort,  and  the  city  pays  his 
tax.  His  neighbour  has  a  family  and  four  children,  and  lives  in  three  rooms  which 
constitute  a  very  narrow,  and  hardly  a  sufficient  lodging,  but  the  rent  of  it  is  five 
hundred  francs  and  the  unhappy  manmust  pay  :  (i)  Six  times  greater  taxes  on  what 
lie  consumes  than  his  neighbour  ;  (2)  A  furniture  tax  ;  (3)  Some  portion  of  the  tax 
tliat  the  city  pays  on  the  apartment  of  the  celibate  neighbour.  Evidently  the 
result  is  precisely  the  opposite  of  what  it  should  be."  (Bertillon,  La  statistique 
humaitie  de  la  France.) 

•'*  If  a  purse  should  be  given  by  the  state  to  one  of  every  seven  children  in  the 
same  family  (according  to  a  law  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution  which  has  recently 
been  revived  and  corrected)  it  would  be  no  more  than  justice,  nay,  it  would  be  almost 
an  act  of  simple  reparation  ;  although  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  practical 
results  would  be  considerable.     The  benefit  that  it  would  do  to  the  father  of    the 


33^      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

Everybody  is  agreed  nowadays  as  to  the  defects  in  the  law 
regulating  the  taxation  of  inheritances.     We  believe  that  it  is 

Ininstic  f  more  than  anything  else  by  a  modification  of  this 
present  law  of  law  that  the  practice  of  malthusianism  can  be 
checked.  The  tax  on  every  inheritance  which  is 
to  be  divided  up  among  a  great  number  of  children  ought  as 
far  as  possible  to  be  reduced,  whereas  the  tax  on  inheritances 
which  are  to  go  undivided  to  a  single  inheritor  ought  to  be 
increased.  The  small  proprietor  who  limits  himself  to  one 
child,  in  order  to  avoid  dividing  his  field,  would  soon  learn  that 
he  is  making  a  bad  calculation  if  by  that  very  act  he  subjects 
his  estate  to  a  heavy  tax.  On  the  contrary,  whoever  lays  out 
his  fortune  in  rearing  a  number  of  children  would  at  least  have 
the  satisfaction  of  thinking  that  almost  the  whole  of  his 
fortune  could  be  handed  down  to  them,  that  the  public 
treasury  would  take  little  of  it,  and  that  if  his  property  had  to 
be  divided  after  his  death  it  would  at  least  not  be  seriously 
diminished  ;  almost  nothing  would  "  go  out  of  the  family."  ' 

Every  reform  of  the  law  of  inheritance  must  make  up  its 
account  with  the  two  motives  which  alone  inspire  a  man  to 

Tax  on  inheri-  ^"^^58  a  fortune:  a  personal  interest,  and  an 
tances  falling  to  interest  in  his  wife  and  children.  So  that,  when- 
''^^^^^'  ever  a   man   is  a   widower  without   children,  his 

property  might  be  made  subject  at  his  death  to  a  considerable 
tax,  without  his  industry,  which  society  is  interested  in  stimu- 
lating, being  thereby  especially  discouraged.  A  considerable 
tax  therefore  on  the  property  left  by  celibates,  and  married 
couples  without  children,  would  be  evidently  equitable,  and, 
no  more  than  in  the  case  of  a  tax  on  celibacy,  to  be  regarded 
as  a  penalty.     The  simple  fact  is  that  a  man  who  has  not 

family  is  too  uncertain,  and  the  prospect  of  such  an  advantage  could  influence  only 
a  man  who  had  six  children  and  was  hesitating  about  the  seventh  ;  but  he  who  has 
had  six  children  is  not  a  follower  of  Malthus  and  is  not  likely  to  be. 

'  Suppose,  to  take  almost  the  first  figures  that  occur  to  one,  that  the  law  taxed  an 
only  son's  inheritance  twenty  per  cent.  ;  it  might  tax  an  inheritance  to  be  handed 
down  to  two  children  only  fifteen  per  cent.,  an  inheritance  to  be  handed  down  to 
three  children  ten  per  cent.,  to  four  children  eight  percent.,  to  five  children  six  per 
cent.,  to  six  children  four  per  cent.,  to  seven  children  two  per  cent.,  and  to  any 
greater  number  of  children  nothing.     Remark  that  this  gradation  actually  exists 


POPULATION  AND    THE   FUTURE    OF    THE  RACE.       339 

reared  children  has  expended  much  less  of  his  income  for  the 
benefit  of  society,  and  that  society  has  the  right  during  his  hfe- 
time  or  at  his  death  to  trim  the  scales  against  him.  Indeed 
proportionate  taxation  ought  positively  to  be  a  matter  of  con- 
science with  society. 

Given  the  importance  o{  large  fortunes  in  modern  society, 

religion  and   the  patriarchal  spirit    together   devised  in  former 

French  law  of     times   a   compromise   between    the    necessity   of 

inheritance  tends    having  a  large  family  and   of  keeping  the  family 

toward  minute  .  i-    •  i      i       t        r         . 

subdivision  of  possessions  undivided  ;  1  refer  to  primogeniture. 
estates.  -p^  attempt  to  re-establish  the  law  of  primogeni- 

ture in  nations  which  have  rejected  it  would  be  impracticable 
and  unjust,  even  though  one  should  recognize  that  the  tradi- 
tional superstition  and  prejudices  on  this  point  were  not  with- 
out some  justification.  But,  to  reassure  those  who  dislike 
the  thought  of  the  inevitable  partition  of  their  territorial  pos- 
sessions, the  present  laws  in  regard  to  inheritances  might  be 
made  less  stringent.  Every  land-owner,  every  owner  of  a 
factory  or  a  commercial  house,  might  be  left  free  to  designate 
which  of  his  children  he  considered  most  competent  to  succeed 
him  in  the  possession  of  such  real  property,  and  the  law  of 
partition  might  be  considered  as  applicable  to  the  rest  of  his 
property  only.  It  would  be  a  sort  of  liberty  of  bequest,  within 
the  limits  of  the  family.  The  authors  of  our  civil  code 
broke  the  line  of  succession  as  it  had  existed  in  the  families  of 
the  nobility  ;  and  they  did  well,  in  that  they  dispersed  masses 
of  unproductive  capital,  and  by  that  very  fact  rendered  them 
productive  ;  but  they  did  less  well,  in  that  they  rendered  it 
difficult  to  bequeath  large  farming  or  manufacturing  establish- 
ments from  father  to  son.  They  have  necessitated  the  sub- 
to-day  but  inversely,  because  just  in  so  far  as  an  inheritance  has  to  be  divided  up 
among  a  large  number  of  children,  the  expenses  of  the  sale  and  partition  tend  to 
increase  and  the  value  of  the  property,  which  is  thus  split  up  into  bits,  tends  to 
decrease.  A  number  of  cases  may  be  cited  in  which  inheritances  that  had  to  be 
divided  among  seven  or  eight  children  have  lost,  by  partition,  not  only  twenty  but 
even  twenty-five  or  fifty  per  cent,  of  their  value.  On  the  contrary,  an  inheritance 
transmitted  to  a  single  inheritor  is  burdened  witli  the  direct  tax  only,  and  tluit 
amounts  at  most  to  ten  per  cent.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  the  law  protects  small 
families  and  encourages  sterility. 


34°      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

division  of  capitals  whicli  were  much  more  productive  in  their 
entirety  ;  and  as  a  result  families  of  farmers  and  manufacturers 
who  remain,  from  father  to  son,  for  generations  in  the  same 
pursuit  and  are  thereby  enabled  to  carry  it  to  its  highest  degree 
of  perfection,  have  almost  disappeared  in  France.  Such  com- 
mercial or  land-owning  dynasties  constitute  the  greatness  of 
England  and  of  Germany.  A  great  commercial  house  or  a 
great  farming  enterprise  is  not  to  be  created  in  a  day,  and  if 
after  one's  death  one's  labour  is  to  be  destroyed  by  partition, 
so  much  the  worse  for  the  country.  Le  Play  has  depicted  in 
lively  colours  the  despair  of  the  farmer  who  has  laboured  all 
his  life  to  perfect  a  system  of  cultivation,  of  the  manufacturer 
who  has  created  a  prosperous  house,  who  see  their  work 
menaced  with  destruction  if  they  have  a  number  of  children. 
Such  men  have  but  one  resource  ;  to  withdraw  enough  money 
from  their  business  to  satisfy  the  requirements  of  the  law  in 
regard  to  the  children  who  are  not  to  succeed  them,  and  thus 
to  prevent  the  sale  of  their  establishment.  The  result  of  this 
manoeuvre  often  is  that  the  child  who  inherits  this  establish- 
ment is  left  too  poor  to  carry  on  the  business  and  finds 
ruin  where  his  father  found  wealth.  The  law,  in  its  endeav- 
our to  divide  the  produce  of  the  father's  labour  among 
his  children,  too  often  annihilates  the  most  valuable  part  of 
the  father's  labour  ;  in  the  effort  to  obtain  an  apparent  equity 
in  the  partition  of  the  revenues,  it  destroys  the  source  of 
them.     The  law  cuts  down  the  tree  to  gather  the  fruit. 

Military  service,  which  is  perhaps  the  heaviest  burden  that 

the  state  lays  on  the  individual,  also   constitutes  the  state's 

„    ...       principal  means  of  influencing  him.     The  most 

Large  families      ^  *  '^ 

should  be  partly  Malthusiau  native  of  Normandy  would  become 
exempted  from       amenable  at  onceif  a  question  of  five  years' military 

military  service.  ^  -'  -' 

service,  more  or  less,  were  involved.  To-day  the 
father  of  four  living  children  is  exempt  from  the  twenty-eight 
days'  military  service  (the  law  does  not  seem  to  be  well  known, 
but  ought  to  be);  he  ought  to  be  exempt  from  all  reserve  service, 
even  in  time  of  war.  Similarly,  as  has  already  been  demanded, 
a  family  which  has  furnished  two  soldiers  to  the  army  ought 
to  be  exempt  from  further  military  duty.     The  younger  sons 


POPULATION  AND    THE   FUTURE   OF    THE  RACE.       341 

should  be  definitively  excused  from  military  service  by  the 
fact  of  their  two  elder  brothers  having  marched  under  the 
flag.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  families  in  which  there  are  more 
than  two  sons  are  so  rare  that  such  a  measure  would  hardly 
diminish  the  annual  recruits.'  More  than  that  the  Budget  is 
unequal  to  the  needs  of  the  whole  number  of  possible  recruits 
even  as  the  case  stands;  it  is  therefore  irrational  to  make  one's 
selection  from  among  them  by  an  appeal  to  chance.  Such  a 
device  is  an  appeal  to  inequality  and  that  under  the  disguise  of 
equality  and  law  ;  the  future  of  every  society  depends  upon  the 
decreasing  part  played  in  it  by  the  injustices  of  chance.  The 
military  service  required  of  each  family  should  therefore  be 
regulated  with  some  rational  reference  to  the  number  of  chil- 
dren in  it."* 

Emigration  tends  to  augment  fertility ;  emigration  must 
therefore  be  favoured  by  law.  It  is  soberly  estimated  at  pres- 
ent that  from  thirty  to  forty  thousand  French- 
be^encSgeV"  '^^n  emigrate  each  year;  the  figure  is  relatively 
small,  but  that  number  of  emigrants  a  year  is 
enough  to  settle  important  colonies.'  It  is  unscientific  to 
maintain  at  this  late  day  that  the  French  are  incapable  of 
colonizing  when  they  have  so  powerfully  aided  in  forming  the 
great  English  colonies  in  Canada,  India,  and  Egypt  and  are 
actually  colonizing  Algeria  and  Tunis.  What  w^e  lack  is  not 
the  ability  to  establish  colonies,  but  the  habit  of  emigration. 
Emigration,  in  spite  of  its  importance  for  us,  obtains  mainly  in 
certain  poor   districts  in  France  ;  it  is  not  general  enough  to 

'  M.  Javal  in  1885  proposed,  in  the  Chamber,  to  substitute  for  Article  19  of  the 
commission  another  article,  according  to  the  terms  of  which  when  two  or  three 
sons  of  the  same  family  were  enrolled  they  should  be  held  to  only  three  years  of 
service  all  told,  and  that  when  there  were  more  than  three  brothers  enrolled  they 
should  each  be  required  to  give  but  one  year's  service.  The  amendment  was  due 
to  the  fact  that  population  in  France  is  not  increasing. 

"  Young  soldiers  also,  as  M.  Richet  says,  might  be  permitted  to  marry  under 
certain  conditions.     They  are  precisely  at  the  age  when  fertility  is  at   its  greatest. 

■■^  Rightly  to  appreciate  the  ability  of  France  to  maintain  colonies,  this  figure 
must  not  be  compared  with  the  rate  of  emigration  from  other  countries,  but  with 
the  average  excess  of  births  over  deaths  in  France.  Thus  considered,  the  number 
of  forty  thousand  emigrants  (adopted  by  M.  Paul  Leroy-Beaulieu)  becomes  rela- 
tively large,  since  the  annual  excess  of  our  births  is  not  one  hundred  thousand. 


342      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

have  any  considerable   influence,  as  yet,  in  raising  the  birth- 
rate ;  the  law  should  here  be  looked  to,  to  correct  the  habits 
of  the  people.     In  England  out  of  every  family  of  four  sons  it 
is  almost  to  be  expected  that  one  of  them  will  go  to  India, 
another  to   Australia,  a  third  to  America  ;   there  is  nothing 
surprising  in  it,  it  is  the  custom.     A  sense  of  distance  is  almost 
unknown  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  Channel.     In  France,  if 
a  single  child  leaves  the  country,  even  as  the  secretary  of  an 
embassy,  he  is  as  solemnly  bid  good-bye  as  if  he  were  going 
never  to  return,  as  if  he  were  dying  even.     There  is  a  great 
deal  of  prejudice  and  ignorance  in  paternal  anguish  of  this  kind. 
Such  and  such  a  sedentary  profession,  for  example  that  of  a 
physician,  is  subject  to  perils  that  are  perfectly  well  known 
to  statisticians  and  which  we  nevertheless  do  not  hesitate  to 
choose  for  our  children  precisely  because  it  permits  them  to 
live  next  door  to  us,  rather  than  at  the  other  end  of   the  world. 
Such  national  prejudices  will  give  way  before  education,  the 
increasing  habit  of  travelling,  and  the  progressively  rapid  cir- 
culation of  society  ;  laws  might  favour  it.     The  spirit  of  enter- 
prise and  colonization,  which  seems  at  first  sight  so  foreign  ta 
love  of  family,  is  capable  of  being  allied  with  it ;  nay,  becomes, 
under  certain  circumstances,  the  very  condition  of  it.     To  rear 
a  numerous  family  is  always  in  a  certain  sense  to  colonize,  even 
though  all  the  children  live  within  the  limits  of  their  native 
country.     To  rear  a  large  family  is  to  launch  one's  children 
upon  unknown  ways,  and  demands  the  activity  of  mind  and  fer- 
tility of  resource  which  are  of  the  essence  of  colonization.     The 
creation  of  a  numerous  family  is  positively  a  social  enterprise, 
as  the  creation  of  a  great  commercial  house  or  a  great  farming 
industry   is  an   economical  enterprise;  success  in   both   cases 
demands  constant  effort  and  brings  a  various  profit  in  return 
Suppose  a  couple  have  reared  ten  children  to  labour  and  hon- 
esty ;  the    children    form    a    protecting    phalanx    about    the 
parents  and  give  them,  in  return  for  the  rearing,  if  not  gross 
and  direct  benefits,  at  least  happiness   and   honour.     We  do 
not  wish  to  disguise  the  fact,  however,  that  to   rear  a  family 
involves  a  certain  amount  of  risk  ;  but  every  enterprise  involves 
a  risk.     And  indeed  the  prime  need   in  this  whole  matter  is 


POPULATION  AND    THE   FUTURE    OF    THE  RACE.       343 

to  develop  the  spirit  of  enterprise  and  audacity  which  was 
formerly  so  powerful  in  the  French  nation.  A  great  many 
people  to-day  remain  celibate  for  the  same  reason  that  they 
are  content  to  live  within  a  small  income  without  endeavouring 
to  increase  their  fortune  by  investing  it  in  commerce  or 
manufacture  ;  they  are  afraid  of  the  risks  of  the  family,  just  as 
they  are  afraid  of  commercial  risks.  They  consume  instead  of 
producing,  because  producing  is  inseparable  from  a  certain 
preliminary  investment  of  money  and  activity.  Similarly  a 
great  many  people,  once  they  are  married,  endeavour,  so  to 
speak,  to  reduce  marriage  to  a  minimum  ;  they  do  not  dare 
to  have  children  ;  they  are  afraid  of  the  preliminary  outlay, 
they  are  afraid  of  emerging  from  the  shell  of  their  short-sighted 
egoism. 

It  is,  of  course,  emigration  to  French  colonies  that  the  law 

ought  especially  to  favour,  and  for  that  purpose  there  is  one 

respect    in    which    the    military    law    should    be 

To  French  reformed.      As    a    matter    of     fact,    in    spite  of 

■colonies. 

the    law    of    July    27,     1872,     the     government 

is  obliged  to  grant  pardon  to  the  numerous  Basques  and 
Savoyards  who  emigrate  to  escape  military  service.  More 
than  that,  the  sole  important  current  that  exists  in  France 
flows  toward  foreign  colonies,  and  often  creates  on  their 
shores  industries  which  rival  our  own,  while  they  rarely  open 
advantageous  markets  for  our  commerce.  Is  it  not  a 
matter  of  urgent  necessity  to  make  our  colonies  as  attrac- 
tive to  the  French  emigrants  as  the  colonies  of  any  foreign 
nationality?  If  the  young  man  of  twenty  who  has  made 
up  his  mind  to  pass  some  years  of  his  life  in  Brazil  finds  him- 
self de  facto  exempt  from  military  service,  ought  he  not 
to  be  de  jure  exempt  if  he  wishes  to  emigrate  to  Algiers,  to 
Tunis,  to  Tonquin,  to  Madagascar?  Emigration  is  itself  a 
sort  of  military  service.  Colonists  defend  and  enlarge  the 
frontiers  of  the  countries  ;  a  really  rational  law  should  recog- 
nize them  as  a  portion  of  the  military  power  of  the  country. 
Fifty-four  chambers  of  commerce  in  our  principal  cities,  "  con- 
sidering  that  it  is  of  the  greatest  importance  to  encourage,  by 
•every   means    possible,    intelligent    and    well-educated    young 


344      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

people,  intending  to  emigrate,  to  establish  themselves  in 
our  colonies,"  demanded  justly  "  that,  in  times  of  peace, 
young  men  residing  in  the  colonies  should  be  granted 
a  delay  of  five  years  in  the  call  to  military  service,  a  delay 
which  should  become  a  definitive  exemption  after  a  further 
residence  of  five  consecutive  years.  We  believe  that  this 
period  of  ten  years  might  be  shortened,  and  that  a  residence 
of  seven  years  in  the  colonies,  or  even  of  five  in  certain  dis- 
tant colonies,  like  Tonquin,  might  be  infinitely  more  profitable 
to  the  mother  country  than  a  three-years'  military  service  at 
home.'  We  are  much  less  in  need  of  soldiers  to  guard  our 
colonies  than  of  colonists  ;  indeed  our  colonies  are  too  often 
"colonies  without  colonists."  More  than  that,  we  travel  too 
little,  we  are  not  as  well  acquainted  as  we  should  be  with  our 
own  possessions ;  whoever  had  spent  five  of  the  most  active 
years  of  his  life  in  the  colonies  would  be  tempted  to  return 
there  or  to  send  his  friends  and  relatives  there.  An  amend- 
ment, looking  to  this  exemption  from  military  service,  was 
discussed  in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  in  May  and  June,  1884. 
If  it  should  ever  be  passed,  it  might  have  a  considerable 
influence  upon  the  destinies  of  the  French  people.'' 

'  The  legal  minimum  of  required  residence  should  not  be  taken  as  represent- 
ing the  real  duration  of  actual  residence  :  people  do  not  come  back  from  distant 
countries  merely  for  the  wishing  ;  but  the  legislature  should  take  advantage  of  the 
psychological  effect  of  a  definite  figure  ;  an  emigrant  rarely  leaves  France  without 
a  determination  to  be  gone  only  so  long.  The  majority  of  the  Basques  who 
emigrate  in  such  large  numbers  to  America  expect  to  return  soon  ;  three-fourths  of 
them  become  good  citizens  of  the  Argentine  Republic. 

*  Among  the  secondary  causes  which  tend  to  lower  the  French  birth-rate,  and 
which  the  law  might  counteract,  let  us  notice  that  of  abortion,  which  is  practised  in 
France  not  less  commonly  than  in  Germany,  but  bears  much  worse  results  here 
than  there,  because  of  the  small  number  of  children  that  are  born  in  France.  Paris 
positively  enjoys  a  reputation  for  the  art  of  miscarriage,  and  ladies  come  there 
from  various  parts  of  the  world  to  be  relieved  of  their  children.  "One  of  the 
professors  of  our  schools  said  this  year,  in  one  of  his  courses,  that  a  midwife  had 
confessed  to  him  that  she  produced  on  an  average  one  hundred  miscarriages  a  year." 
(Dr.  Verrier,  Revue  scietttijique,  June  21,  1884.)  Pajot  affirms  that  there  are 
more  miscarriages  than  births.  Might  not  this  state  of  things  be  remedied  :  i. 
By  the  re-establishment  of  the  revolving  boxes  {tours):  2.  By  a  more  constant 
inspection  of  the  books  and  offices  of  midwives  and  accoucheurs,  such  as  furnished 
lodgings  in  Paris  are  subject  to. 

Among  the  principal  reasons  which  prevent  marriage  let  us  mention  the  pre- 


POPULATION  AND    THE  FUTURE   OF    THE  RACE.       345 

III.  Apart   from  the   laws,  the  great  means  of  influencing 

races  is  public  education  :  it  is  by  that  means  that  the  ideas 

and    feelin";s    may    be    moulded.       The    French 
Dangers  of  de-  o  -' 

population  should  people  must  be  enlightened,  therefore,  on  the 
be  taught.  disastrous  consequences  of  depopulation;    senti- 

ments of  patriotism,  of  honour,  of  duty,  must  in  every  possible 
way  be  appealed  to.  The  schoolmaster,  the  physician,  and 
the  mayor  may  all  be  of  help.  There  are  a  whole  multitude 
of  such  means  of  instruction  that  are  being  neglected. 

In  the  first  place  there  are  military  conferences.     Confer- 
ences of  a  half  hour  each,  with  striking  facts  and  examples  and 

a  few   significant  figures,  might   exercise  a   con. 
Inthearmyby    gj^erable  influence  on  the  army,  which  is  to-day 

the  nation.  i\Iilitary  conferences  will  some  day 
certainly  be  one  of  the  great  means  for  the  dissemination  of 
knowledge  ;  they  have  recently  been  employed  with  success  in 
Belgium  during  the  strikes,  to  inculcate  notions  of  political 
economy  in  the  army  and  to  fortify  the  military  against  cer- 
tain-communistic arguments. 

liminary  formalities,  which  are  too  numerous  even  when  both  parties  are  French, 
and  are  simply  numberless  when  one  party  is  a  foreigner.  The  law  of  marriages 
when  both  parties  are  French  ought  to  be  simplified  to  the  utmost  possible 
extent,  so  that  an  impatience  of  the  preliminaries  could  in  nowise  influence 
engaged  couples.  More  than  that  every  effort  should  be  made  to  facilitate  marriages 
between  French  subjects  and  foreigners,  unions  the  results  of  which  are  generally 
good  for  the  race  and  which  are  hindered  by  all  sorts  of  legal  obstacles  in  certain 
countries  ;  this  last  question  is  a  subject  to  be  dealt  with  by  diplomacy.  Still 
other  causes  that  the  law  might  modify  operate  in  France,  if  not  to  diminish 
the  birth-rate,  at  least — what  amounts  to  the  same  thing — to  increase  the  mortality 
among  children.  In  the  first  place  is  to  be  reckoned  the  employment  of  wet- 
nurses,  who  should  be  subject  to  a  much  more  rigorous  surveillance  than  they  are 
at  present,  under  the  Roussel  law.  In  the  second  place,  there  is  the  deplorable 
condition  of  illegitimate  children,  the  mortality  among  whom  is  greater  in  France 
than  in  any  other  country:  some  of  them  are  reported  as  stillborn,  who  medical 
statistics  would  go  to  show  are  the  victims  of  murder  ;  others  die  of  hunger 
in  the  second  week  of  their  birth  owing  to  negligence  or  cruelty  on  the  part  of 
the  mother.  The  re-establishment  of  the  revolving  boxes  (fours)  would  here  also 
be  of  prime  service.  In  the  third  place,  let  us  mention  the  exceptional  mortality 
in  France  of  adults  from  twenty  to  twenty-five  years  of  age,  which  must  result 
from  bad  administration  in  the  army.  Legislators  and  administrators  should 
direct  their  attention  simultaneously  to  all  these  points,  if  they  are  to  check  the 
current  of  depopulation  in  France. 


346      DISSOLUTION  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

Then,  in  the  second  place,  posters  might  be  used.     Certain 

speeches  delivered  in  the  Chamber  or  the  Senate  have  a  much 

feebler  title  to  be  placarded  on  the  walls  of  remote 

In  the  country    ^jjiacres  than  such  and  such  economical,  statistical, 

by  proclamations,  °  _  '  ' 

and  geographical   information.      In   the   country 

placarding  might  be  supplemented  by  viva  voce  reading  by 
some  important  functionary  of  the  village,  or  even  by  the 
public  crier.  The  Bulletin  des  ComnmneSy  if  it  were  composed 
more  carefully  than  it  is  and  filled  with  examples,  might  be 
read  every  Sunday  in  front  of  the  town  hall.  If  the  school- 
master were  intrusted  with  this  function  the  reading  would  be 
the  germ  of  a  weekly  conference,  which  considering  the  empti- 
ness and  monotony  of  country  life  might  well  succeed  in 
attracting  a  certain  number  of  the  public.  Statistical  and 
economical  information  on  the  depopulation  of  certain 
provinces  ;  on  the  dangers  of  such  depopulation ;  on  the  enor- 
mous growth  of  the  English,  German,  and  Italian  peoples  ;  on 
the  social  consequences  of  the  enfeeblement  of  a  race — might 
thus  be  placarded,  read  aloud,  and  commented  on  in  order  to 
call  to  the  attention  of  everyone  the  economical  and  political 
ruin  which  is  menacing  us.  The  influence  of  religious  instruc- 
tion is  diminishing;  it  is  essential  to  supply  its  place  by  a 
moral  and  patriotic  education  which  shall  combat  prejudice, 
egoism,  imprudence,  and  false  prudence. 

One  of  the  commonest  psychological  illusions  that  a  better 
education  might  dispel   is  the   belief  that  one's  children   are 

going  to  depend    for    their    happiness    on  pre- 
Tastes  of  .  ,  .  , 

parents  and  of      cisely   the    Same    circumstances  that    constitute 

children  not  the      one's  own  happiness.     A  miser,  whose  happiness 

same. 

consists  in  adding  to  his  wealth,  does  not  perceive 
that  his  posterity  will  not  lay  the  same  emphasis  that  he  does 
on  the  possession  of  an  immense  and  undivided  capital.  The 
peasant,  who  has  passed  his  life  in  rounding  out  his  plot  of 
ground,  by  obtaining  here  a  bit  and  there  a  bit  of  real  estate  at 
the  expense  of  infinite  stratagem,  conceives  his  son  as  finding 
his  highest  happiness  in  a  continuation  of  the  same  process. 
His  vision  does  not  stretch  beyond  the  hedge  that  bounds  his 
own  meadow,  or  rather  the  hedge  that  bounds  the  neighbour- 


POPULATION  AND    THE  FUTURE    OF    THE  RACE.       347 

ing  meadow  which  he  is  ambitious  to  acquire.  A  viUage 
butcher  will  have  but  one  child,  so  that  he  may  make  him  a 
butcher  like  himself,  and  his  successor  ;  if  he  had  two,  the 
second  might  be  forced  to  become  a  baker  or  a  carpenter  or  a 
locksmith.  Wiiat  a  misfortune  !  — how  could  one  consent  to  live 
if  one  were  not  a  butcher  I  The  idle  man  of  leisure,  who  passes 
the  first  forty  years  of  his  life  between  women  and  horses, 
dreams  of  nothing  better  for  his  heir  than  idleness.  Those,  on 
the  contrary,  who  feel  such  and  such  a  thorn  in  their  present 
mode  of  life  imagine  that  they  are  securing  perfect  happiness 
for  their  son  if  they  secure  him  an  immunity  from  that  particu- 
lar source  of  suffering.  The  hard-working  day  labourer,  the 
small  shopkeeper,  the  functionary  who  has  laboured  all  his 
life  ten  or  twelve  hours  out  of  every  twenty-four,  and  has  never 
had  but  one  desire  in  his  life — that  of  taking  his  fill  of  rest — 
imagines  that  his  son  will  naturally  be  much  happier  than  him- 
self if  he  does  not  have  to  work  so  much.  Ninety-five  per 
cent,  of  the  human  race  are  bound  to  hard  labour  and  imagine 
that  the  pinnacle  of  happiness  would  be  to  do  nothing.  The 
majority  are  absolutely  ignorant  of  the  fact  that,  other  things 
equal,  happiness  is  never  exactly  proportionate  to  wealth,  and 
that,  according  to  one  of  Laplace's  theorems,  if  fortune  should 
increase  by  geometrical  progression,  happiness  would  increase 
by  arithmetical  progression  ;  the  millionaire  controls  but  a 
fraction  more  happiness  than  a  workman  who  makes  enough 
to  live  on.  And  too,  wealth  is  never  known  at  its  best  except 
by  the  man  who  has  made  it,  who  knows  what  it  is  worth,  who 
looks  upon  it  with  the  satisfaction  of  an  artist  contemplating 
his  work,  of  a  house-owner  examining  his  house,  of  a  peasant 
measuring  his  field.  A  fortune  is  always  more  precious  to  the 
man  who  has  got  it  together  than  to  his  son,  who  will  per- 
haps dissipate  it.  If  there  is  one  anxiom  that  fathers  ought  to 
take  the  trouble  to  master,  it  is  this:  A  robust,  intelligent 
young  man  with  the  advantage  of  a  good  education,  which 
to-day  is  indispensable,  runs  a  greater  chance  of  being  happy 
in  life  if  he  is  busy,  and  he  will  not  be  busy  if  a  fortune  is 
handed  to  him  when  he  comes  of  age.  If  a  young  man  is  to 
be  made  happy,  the  surest  means  is  not  to  give  him  a  fortune 


348      DISSOLUTIO.V  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  EXISTING  SOCIETIES. 

but  to  supply  him  with  an  opportunity  of  acquiring  one,  if 
fortune  be  his  aim.' 

The  peasantry  and  the  middle  classes  of  France,  when  they 

become  more  enlightened,  will  begin  to  understand  that  the 

Relation  universe  stretches  beyond   their  village  or  their 

between  ample       street;  that  their  children,  when  once  they  have 

means  of  subsist-  rr    ■         \  \  i         mi    i  i    •        i 

ence  and  popuia-  been  suthciently  educated,  Will  have  a  multitude 
*^°°*  of  careers  open   to  them,  and    notably  that   of 

emigration  to  the  colonies.  Whenever  a  limitless  field  of 
action  is  thrown  open  to  a  race,  its  birth-rate  increases.  People 
who  live  near  unoccupied  land,  or  who  see  numerous  careers 
open  to  their  children,  are  like  people  who  live  on  the  coast  in 
the  presence  of  the  wealth  of  the  ocean.  What  is  the  explan- 
ation of  the  well-known  fertility  of  the  fishing  population,  even 
in  France?  It  has  been  attributed  to  differences  of  food  ;  it  is 
more  probably  due,  as  has  been  remarked,  to  the  fact  that  the 
produce  of  fishing  is  proportionate  to  the  number  of  fishermen 
and  that  the  sea  is  large  enough  and  deep  enough  for  all. 

To  sum  up,  the  relation  of  religious  beliefs  to  the  mainte- 
nance of   the  race  is  the  foundation  of    one  of   the  gravest 
problems  that  the  decline  of   Christianity  gives 

Summarvi  .  _  -  ,  .      .         ,  ,  ,  ,  . 

rise  to.  It  we  have  insisted  at  length  upon  this 
problem,  the  reason  is  that  it  is  almost  the  only  one  in  regard 
to  which  neither  morals  nor  politics  have  as  yet  seriously 
attempted  to  supply  the  place  of  religion.  In  regard  to  such 
questions  morals  have  hitherto  been  afraid  to  insist,  and  poli- 
tics have  been  unpardonably  negligent.  Religion  alone  is 
afraid  of  nothing  and  has  neglected  nothing.  This  state  of 
things  must  be  changed  ;  some  solution  must  be  found  for  so 
vital  a  problem — a  problem  which  becomes  every  year  more 

'  We  conceive,  for  example,  that  a  father  who  proposes  to  enrich  his  son  might 
often  do  well  to  take  as  the  measure  of  his  generosity  the  sum  that  his  son  can  lay 
by,  and  does  really  lay  by,  during  a  year  of  labour.  The  father  might  double  or 
even  sextuple  that  sum,  but  he  ought  at  least  to  make  it  the  basis  of  his  calculations 
instead  of  taking  counsel  with  some  vague  and  often  deceptive  notion  of  equality, 
or  with  his  affection  for  his  child,  which  is  often  an  extreme  instance  of  inequality. 
We  know  a  young  man  who  at  his  twenty-eighth  year  had  already  amassed  by  ten 
years  of  labour  forty  thousand  francs  ;  his  parents  tripled  the  amount. 


POPULATION  AND    THE   FUTURE    OF    THE   RACE.       349 

and  more  vital  as  instinct  declines  in  power  and  reflective 
intelligence  becomes  stronger.'  Shall  we  be  obliged  some 
day  to  adopt  the  most  radical  imaginable  solution  ;  shall  those 
who  have  no  children  be  obliged  to  pay  for  the  rearing  and 
education  of  the  children  of  those  who  have  many?  No; 
before  reaching  so  extreme  a  point  as  that  a  number  of  pallia- 
tives will  have  been  tried,  and  we  have  endeavoured  to  sug- 
gest some  of  them.  What  is  essential  is  that  politics,  morals, 
education,  and  hygiene  should  all  do  their  duty  in  this  matter, 
in  especial  since  religion  is  nowadays  beginning  to  be  power- 
less in  it.  Science  must  do  in  the  future  what  religion  has 
done  in  the  past ;  must  secure  the  fertility  of  the  race  and  its 
physical,  moral,  and  economical  education. 

'  See  Esquisse  d'tme   morale    sans  obligation   ni  sanction,   p.    53,  and    Morale 
anglaise  contemporaine ,  2^  partie. 


part  Ubir&. 

NON-RELIGION  OF  THE  FUTURE. 
CHAPTER    I. 

RELIGIOUS   INDIVIDUALISM. 

I.  Is  a  renovation  of  religion  possible?  i.  Is  a  unification  of  the 
great  religions  to-day  existing  possible?  2.  Is  the  appearance  of 
a  new  religion  to  be  expected  ? — Future  miracles  impossible — 
Religious  poetry  not  to  be  expected — Men  of  genius  capable  of 
sincerely  and  naively  labouring  in  the  creating  of  a  new  religion 
not  to  be  expected — Impossibility  of  adding  to  the  original  stock 
of  religious  ideas — No  new  cult  possible— Last  attempts  at  a  new 
cult  in  America  and  in  France — The  Positivisf  cult — Ethical 
culture— Can  socialism  renew  religion  ? — Advantages  and  defects 
of  socialistic  experiments. 

II.  Religious  anomy  and  the  substitution  of  doubt  for  faith — i. 
Will  the  absence  of  religion  result  in  scepticism  ?  Will  the 
number  of  sceptics  increase  with  the  disappearance  of  religion  ? 
2,  Substitution  of  doubt  for  faith— Genuinely  religious  charac- 
ter of  doubt. 

III.  Substitution  of  metaphysical  hypothesis  for  dogma — Difference 
between  religious  sentiment  and  instinct  for  metaphysics — Imper- 
ishable character  of  the  latter — Sentiment  at  once  of  the  limits  of 
science  and  of  the  infinity  of  our  ideal — Spencer's  attempted 
reconciliation  of  science  and  religion — Confusion  of  religion  with 
metaphysics. 

/.     Is  a  renovation  of  religion  possible  ? 

We  have  seen  that  the  influence  of  dogma  and  of  religious 
moraHty  is  on  the  wane  in  actually  existi-ng  societies  ;  but  will 

Is contempo-       "°^  ^^^'"''  P^^'io*^  ^^  decline  be  followed  by  a  reac- 
rary scepticism       tion  in  the  opposite  direction? 

Such  a  reaction  could  take  place  in  two  ways 
only:  l.  By  the  unification  of  religions;  2.  By  the  appear- 
ance of  a  new  religion.     The  unification  of  existing  religions 

350 


RELIGIOUS  INDIVIDUALISM.  35 ^ 

is  not  to-day  to  be  thought  of ;  each  of  them  has  shown  itself  to 

be  incapable  of  assimilating  the  others.     The  different  Chris- 

,.,    .      .  tian  confessions  hold  each  other  in  mutual  respect, 
Consolidation  of  ^ 

existing  religions  but  they  do  the  same  with  the  great  religions 
not  possible.  of  the  East.     Islamism  alone  has  made  notable 

progress  among  tribes  still  imbued  with  primitive  animism,  and 
for  them  it  represents  a  manifest  progress.  As  for  Christian 
missionaries  they  have  never  been  able  to  make  many  prose- 
lytes among  the  Mussulmans,  the  Buddhists,  or  the  Hindus. 
The  Hindu  who  has  been  instructed  in  European  science 
necessarily  comes  to  doubt  the  revealed  foundation  of  his 
national  religion,  but  he  is  not  on  that  account  any  the  more 
inclined  to  believe  in  the  Christian  revelation.  He  ceases 
simply  to  be  religious  and  becomes  a  ^free-thinker.  \\\ 
peoples  alike  are  in  that  position  ;  the  principal  great  religions 
possess  an  approximate  value  as  symbols  of  the  unknowable, 
and  worshippers  perceive  no  advance  in  passing  from  one  of 
them  to  the  other :  mankind  in  general  does  not  welcome 
change  for  ciiange's  sake.  Missionaries  themselves  to-day  lack 
faith  io-theiiuieJigjonj  they  possess  either  enthusiasm  minus 
talent  or  talent  minus  enthusiasm,  and  the  time  is  at  hand 
when  the  spirit  of  propagandism,  which  has  hitherto  consti- 
tuted the  power  of  religion,  will  abandon  it.  Few  people  can 
cry  to-day  in  the  words  of  the  unbelieving  Jesuit  missionary  : 
"  Ah,  you  have  no  conception  of  the  pleasure  of  convincing 
men  of  what  you  do  not  believe  yourself!"  Where  absolute 
faith  is  lacking,  and  absolute  faith  in  the  very  details  of  the 
dogmas  is  lacking,  sincerity,  which  constitutes  the  essential 
power  of  all  propagandism,  is  lacking  too.  Bishop  Colenso 
was  one  day  asked,  by  his  neophytes  in  Natal,  some  questions 
on  the  Old  Testament.  After  having  followed  him  up  from 
question  to  question  they  asked  him,  on  his  word  of  honour, 
if  all  that  was  true.  Seized  by  a  scruple,  the  Bishop  fell  into  a 
profound  train  of  reflection,  studied  the  question,  read  Strauss 
and  the  German  commentators,  and  finally  published  a  book  in 
which  he  treats  Biblical  history  as  a  series  of  myths.  To  this 
celebrated  example  of  Colenso  among  the  Kafifirs,  must  be 
joined  that  of  Mr.  Francis  Newman  in  Syria,  and  of  the  Rev. 


352  NON-RELIGION  OF   THE  FUTURE. 

Adams  in  India,  and  of  others  less  well  known.  Efficiently  to 
combat  religions  as  well  organized  as  those  of  India,  for 
example,  our  missionaries  would  be  obliged  to  become  seri- 
ously proficient  in  the  history  of  religion.  But  the  day  they 
sincerely  study  comparative  religion  in  the  hopes  of  convert- 
ing somebody  else,  they  will  themselves  undergo  conversion, 
or  at  least  will  rapidly  learn  to  reject  a  belief  in  a  special 
revelation.'  The  great  religions,  and  principally  the  "  univer- 
sal "  religions,  which  to-day  have  attained  their  full  devel- 
opment, hold  each  other  in  check.  These  vast  bodies  show 
almost  no  signs  of  life  except  within,  by  the  formation  of  new 
centres  of  activity  which  detach  themselves  from  the  primi- 
tive nucleus,  as  we  see  daily  happening  in  the  bosom  of  Prot- 
estantism, which  is  constantly  being  subdivided  into  new  sects  ; 
as  also  within  the  bosom  of  Hinduism,  insomuch  that  the 
only  sign  of  life  that  these  religions  give  is  that  they  are 
beginning  to  disintegrate. 

The  increasing   multiplicity  of    sects,    for  example    of  the 

Protestant  sects ;  the  courageous  efforts  of  certain  disciples  of 

Analogy  be-       Comte  and  of  Spencer,  the  birth  of  Mormonism 

tween  nineteenth    jj-^  America  and  of  Brahmaism  in  India,  have  been 

century  and  time  ^  , .     .  ^ 

ofthe  Antonines  regarded  as  symptoms  of  a  religious  fermentation 
superficial.  analogous  to  that  which  disturbed  the  world  at 

the  time  of  the  Antonines  and  very  possibly  destined,  like 
that,  to  result  in  a  renovation.  "All  things  in  nature  spring 
from  humble  beginnings,  and  no  one  can  to-day  say  whether 
the  unconscious  mission  of  the  fisherman  and  publicans, 
gathered  eighteen  centuries  ago  on  the  borders  of  Lake 
Tiberias  about  a  gentle  and  mystical  idealist,  will  not  to-morrow 

'  See  M.  Goblet  d'Alviella,  L' Evolution  religieuse.  Anglo-Saxon  religious  pros- 
elytism  has  acliieved  the  distinction  of  contradicting  and  paralyzing  itself.  The 
Theosophist  Society  of  the  United  States,  in  1879,  ^^^^  to  India  certain  mission- 
aries, or  rather  counter-missionaries,  who  were  commissioned  "to  preach  the 
majesty  and  glory  of  all  ancient  religions  and  to  fortify  the  Hindu,  the  Cingalese, 
the  Parsee,  against  all  efforts  to  induce  him  to  accept  a  new  faith  instead  of  the 
Vedas,  of  the  Tri-Pitaka  and  of  the  Zend  Avesta."  In  India  and  in  the  island  of 
Ceylon  these  counter-missionaries  have  succeeded  in  bringing  back  to  the  primitive 
faith  some  thousands  of  converts  to  Christianity. 


RELIGIOUS  INDIVIDUALISM.  353 

be  handed  on  to  such  and  such  an  association  of  spiritualists 
prophesying  in  a  gorge  of  the  Rocky  Mountains;  to  such  and 
such  an  illuminated  gathering  of  socialists  in  some  back  shop  in 
London  ;  to  such  and  such  a  band  of  ascetics,  meditating,  like 
the  Essenes  of  old  on  the  miseries  of  the  world,  in  some  jungle 
of  Hindustan.  Perhaps  all  they  need  is  to  discover  on  the 
road  to  Damascus  another  Paul,  to  give  them  a  passport  to 
future  ages."  '  These  analogies  between  our  century  and  that 
of  the  Antonines  are  very  superficial ;  between  the  century 
which,  as  a  whole,  is  of  an  unexampled  incredulity  and  the 
century  which  was  of  an  unexampled  credulity — which 
accepted  all  religion  from  that  of  Isis  and  Mithra  to  that  of 
Christ ;  from  that  of  the  talking  serpent  to  that  of  Christ 
incarnate  in  the  body  of  a  virgin.  During  the  past  eighteen 
hundred  years  a  new  thing  has  been  born  into  the  world — 
science  ;  and  science  is  not  compatible  with  supernatural 
revelations,  which  are  the  foundation  of  religions. 

Will  it  be  objected  that  miracles  still  happen?     Possibly  one 

or  two  notable  ones  in  a  century !    The  surprising  thing  is  not 

that  miracles  still  happen,  but  that,  with  millions 

found  a  religion      of  believers,  including   in  their   ranks  thousands 

to-day  on  miracles  q{   excited   women    and    children,    they   do   not 

desperate.  1  t-  1  1  1     • 

happen  frequently.       bvery  day  ought  to  bring 

forth  its  duly  authenticated  miracle,  but  unhappily  daily 
miracles  no  longer  happen — except  in  mad-houses  and  hos- 
pitals for  the  hysterical,  where  they  are  observed  and  reported 
nowadays  by  incredulous  men  of  science.  When  they  happen 
elsewhere,  true  believers  themselves  are  almost  afraid  of  them 
and  do  not  care  to  talk  about  them.  Of  old  a  king  forbade 
God  to  perform  miracles  ;  the  Pope  has  done  almost  as  much 
to-day  ;  they  are  regarded  as  objects  of  doubt  and  suspicion, 
rather  than  of  edification.  Among  orthodox  Protestant 
nations,  miracles  do  not  happen ;  enlightened  theologians 
among  them  no  longer  insist  on  the  marvellous  elements  in  the 
early  Christian  tradition  ;  they  regard  them  as  more  likely  to 
enfeeble  than  to  confirm  the  authority  of  the  Scriptures.  Add 
that  as  a  means  of  founding  a  new  religion,  or  of  reviving  old 
^  revolution  religieuse  contemporaine,  by  M.  Goblet  d'Alviella,  p.  411. 


354  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

religions,  a  miracle  or  two  would  do  no  good  ;  they  would 
rather  result  in  the  total  destruction  of  the  faith  they  were 
intended  to  establish.  A  whole  series  of  miracles  would  be 
necessary,  a  sort  of  marvellous  atmosphere  in  which  the  whole 
face  of  nature  should  be  transformed,  a  mystic  halo  not  only 
visibly  resting  on  the  head  of  the  prophet,  but  reflected  on  the 
believers  who  surround  him.  In  other  words,  the  Messiah 
must  be  in  his  lifetime  quite  as  wonderful  as  he  is  always 
reported  to  be  afterward,  and  that  without  deception  or  finesse, 
either  on  his  part  or  on  the  part  of  those  who  surround  hifn 
and  are  supported  by  his  divinity.  Unhappily,  in  our  days 
great  men  are  immediately  taken  account  of  by  history,  which 
verifies  everything,  describes  everything,  sets  down  in  plain 
print  the  contemporary  fact,  otherwise  so  likely  to  settle,  with 
time,  into  some  fantastic  shape.  Even  the  legend  of  Napoleon, 
which  he  himself  laboured  with  all  the  resources  of  despotic 
power  and  brutal  force  to  establish,  did  not  last  thirty  years  in 
Europe  ;  in  the  East  it  exists  still,  transfigured.  Personalities 
shrink  beneath  the  touch  of  history.  If  Jesus  had  lived  to-day 
his  letters  would  have  been  published,  and  it  is  impossible  to 
believe  in  the  divinity  of  anybody  after  one  has  read  his  cor- 
respondence. The  slightest  facts  of  an  interesting  man's  life 
are  ascertainable:  state  records  enable  us  to  ascertain  important 
dates,  what  he  did  from  year  to  year  and  even  sometimes  from 
day  to  day;  sometimes  a  mere  appearance  in  court,  such  as 
happened  in  the  life  of  Shakspeare's  father,  may  serve  to  fix  a 
date  ;  and  in  the  life  of  a  prophet  there  would  be  no  lack  of 
appearances  in  court  since  unlicensed  assemblies  are  interdicted. 
Life  to-day  is  so  hemmed  in  by  reality,  so  disciplined,  that  it  is 
difficult  for  the  marvellous  to  find  entrance,  or  to  make  good 
its  lodgment  even  if  it  should  get  in.  We  live  in  little  num- 
bered and  windowed  boxes,  in  which  the  least  disturbance 
attracts  attention ;  we  arc  watched  like  soldiers  living  in  bar- 
racks ;  we  have  every  evening  to  be  present  at  the  roll-call,  with 
no  possibility  of  dropping  out  of  the  society  of  men,  of  return- 
ing into  ourselves,  of  avoiding  the  big  eye  of  society.  We 
are  like  bees  living  under  a  glass  ;  the  observer  can  watch 
them  at  work,  watch  them  constructing  their  hive,  watch  them 


RELIGIOUS  INDIVIDUALISM.  355 

making  their  honey  ;  and  the  sweetest  of  honey,  even  the 
honey  with  which  the  ancients  nourished  the  baby  Jupiter, 
ceases  to  be  marvellous  when  one  has  been  present  at  its  tardy 
and  painstaking  elaboration. 

We  are  far  from  the  time  when  Pascal  could  say  "  Miracles 
are  as  a  flash  of  lightning  that  reveals."  The  lightning  no 
longer  flashes.  Science  stands  ready  to  explain  the  first 
miracle  that  arises  in  support  of  a  new  religion. 

Metaphysical  and  poetic  genius  also,  upon  which  religions 
were  so  dependent  in  their  earliest  stages  in  the  past,  have 

„    .    ^     ,       also    withdrawn    from    their   service.     Read   the 

Gemus  has  de- 

serted  the  service  descriptions  of  the  latest  miracles,  those  at 
ofreiigion.  Lourdes,  for  example  :  the  little  girl  taking  off 

her  stockings  to  step  into  the  rivulet,  the  words  of  the  Virgin, 
the  vision  repeated  as  a  spectacle  before  witnesses  who  saw 
nothing — all  of  it  is  trivial  and  insignificant;  how  far  we 
have  travelled  from  the  Lives  of  the  Saints,  the  Gospel,  the 
great  Hindu  legends !  The  poor  in  spirit  may  see  God  or  the 
Virgin,  but  they  cannot  make  others  see  them  ;  the  poor  in 
spirit  cannot  found  or  revive  religion  ;  it  requires  genius,  and 
genius,  which  bloweth  where  it  listeth,  bloweth  to-day  else- 
where. If  the  Bible  and  the  Gospels  had  not  been  sublime 
poems  they  would  not  have  made  the  conquest  of  the  world, 
^sthetically  considered,  they  are  epics  greater  than  the  Iliad. 
What  Odyssey  equals  that  of  Jesus?  Refined  Greeks  and 
Romans  did  not  at  first  appreciate  the  simple,  impassioned 
poetry  of  the  Gospels  ;  it  was  long  before  they  admired  the 
style  of  the  Scriptures.  St.  Jerome,  transported  in  a  dream  to 
the  feet  of  the  Sovereign  Judge,  heard  a  menacing  voice  cry: 
"  Thou  art  naught  but  a  Ciceronian  !  "  After  this  dream  St. 
Jerome  applied  himself  to  the  study  of  the  beauties  of  the 
Bible  and  the  New  Testament,  and  came  ultimately  to  prefer 
them  to  the  balanced  periods  of  the  great  Latin  orator :  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount,  in  spite  of  some  inconsistencies  (in  part 
the  work  of  the  disciples),  is  more  eloquent  than  the  most 
eloquent  of  Cicero's  orations,  and  the  invectives  against  the 
Pharisees,  authentic  or  not,  are  better  literature  than  the 
denunciations  against  Catiline.     M.  Havet,  in  our  judgment, 


356  NON-RELIGIOA'  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

entirely  misses  the  point,  when  he  asks  how  "  so  great  a 
revolution  could  have  taken  its  rise  from  such  commonplace 
literature  as  the  New  Testament."  The  literary  excellence 
of  the  New  Testament  is  of  a  new  kind,  unparalleled  among 
the  Greeks  or  the  writers  of  the  Old  Testament ;  it  possesses 
the  grace  of  tenderness  and  of  unction,  which  is  well  worth 
the  lyrical  fire  of  the  prophets  ;  it  is  a  profound  and  naive 
manual  of  popular  morality,  and  every  word  makes  one's  heart 
vibrate.  The  literary  success  of  the  New  Testament  was  fully 
merited.  The  Hebrew  people,  who  had  not  produced  one 
man  of  science,  had  evidently  produced  a  succession  of 
sombre,  tender,  puissant  poets  unparalleled  among  any  other 
people ;  a  fact  which  in  a  great  part  explains  the  victori- 
ous progress  of  Hebrew  religion.  Poetry,  like  hope,  is  the 
sister  of  faith,  and  is  more  necessary  than  hope  to  faith,  for 
one  may  forego  the  distant  grace  of  hope  when  one  is  under 
the  present  charm  of  an  illusion. 

To  found  a  great  religion  has  demanded  and  will  always 
demand  the  services  of  men  of  genius  such  as  Jesus  was,  or,  to 
Andthecondi-  t)e  quite  historic,  as  St.  Paul  was.  But  if  genius 
tions  in  which  jg  to  found  religion  it  can  do  so  only  under  two 
could  succeed  are  essential  Conditions.  It  must  in  the  first  place 
wanting,  j^g    absolutely   sincere  ;  we    no    longer    live  in   a 

period  when  religion  can  be  benefited  by  imposture ;  it 
must,  in  the  second  place,  distinctly  impose  upon  itself; 
it  must  be  the  dupe  of  its  own  inspiration,  of  its  own 
interior  illuminations,  disposed  to  see  in  them  something  super- 
human, to  feel  itself  in  direct  communication  with  God,  or  at 
least  especially  designated  by  God.  This  second  condition  was 
easy  to  realize  in  ancient  times  when,  in  their  ignorance  of 
psychological  and  physiological  phenomena,  not  only  men  like 
Jesus  but  philosophers  like  Socrates  and  Plotinus  believed 
that  they  felt  within  them  something  supernatural,  took  their 
visions  and  their  ecstasies  seriously  ;  and,  unable  to  explain 
their  own  very  genuine  genius,  regarded  it  as  a  proof  of  some 
mysterious  or  miraculous  communication  with  God.  Purely 
and  simply  to  rank  these  great  men  among  lunatics  would 
be  absurd  ;  they  were  simply  seeking  to  explain  phenomena 


RELIGIOUS  IXDIVIDUALISM.  357 

which  overtaxed  their  knowledge  and  gave  what,  after  all,  was 
the  most   plausible   explanation   for   the  times  in  which   they 
lived.     With  the  scientific  knowledge  that  we  possess  nowa- 
days, and  which  every  man  who  attains  a  certain  intellectual 
level  inevitably  will  possess,  men  like  Moses  and  Jesus,  men 
who  are  inspired,  will  be  obliged,  so  to  speak,  to  choose  between 
two  alternatives;  to  see  in  their  inspiration  simply  the  natural 
impulse  of  genius,  to  speak  in   their  own  name,  to  make  no 
pretences   to  revelation    or  prophecy,  to  be,  in  effect,  philos- 
ophers, or   actively   to   allow   themselves   to  be  deceived  by 
their  own  exaltation,  to  objectify  it,  to  personify  it,  to  become 
madmen    in    downright   earnest.     At  the  present  day  those 
who  are  not  capable  of    naming   the  force  that  is   acting  in 
them  and  declaring  it  to  be  natural  and  human,  and  of  preserv- 
ing their  self-mastery,  are  definitively  regarded  as  of  unsound 
mind ;  prophets  who  believe  in  their  own  prophecies  are  sent 
to    Charenton.     We  are  familiar  with    distinctions  that  were 
unknown  in  ancient  times,  even  to  the  promoters  of  religious 
ideas ;  the  great  men  who  founded  religions  were  carried  away 
by  the  movement  they  had  themselves  called  into  being;  were 
divinized   by  the  God  that  they  themselves  had  brought  to 
men.     Genius  is  as  capable  of  going  to  school  as  stupidity; 
and,  like    stupidity,  it  has  been  to  school  in  the  nineteenth 
century  and  is  familiar  with    nineteenth-century  science.     A 
time  will  come — nay,  probably  has   come  for  Europe — when 
prophets,  apostles,  and  Messiahs  wall  be  extinct  among  men. 
It  is  a  species  which  is  dying  out.     "  Who  of  us,  who  of  us  will 
become  a  god?"     None  of  us  will  become  a  god,  and  more 
than    that    none  of     us    wants  to.      Science    has   killed  the 
^supexnatural  in  us  even  in  the  very  centre  of  our  being,  in  our 
deepest  ecstasies  ;  visions  no  longer  put  on  the  shape  of  appari- 
tion but  of  simple  hallucination,  and  the  day  they  become  so 
strong  that  we  believe  in  them  we  lose    all  power   to  make 
anybody  else  believe  in  them,  and  become,  not  uncommonly, 
amenable  to  the  law.     The  middle  term  between  the   man  of 
genius  and  the  fool,  the  man  of  inspiration,  of  revelation,  the 
Messiah,  the  God,  has  disappeared. 

Add    that   inspiration    nowadays,  and    forever  more,  lacks 


358  NON.RELIGION  OF   THE  FUTURE. 

and  will  lack  its  appropriate  environment.  Intensity  of 
religious  emotion  in  a  people,  an  intensity  which  sometimes 
Dissemin  ti  n  ^'-'^'^s  to  the  height  of  fanaticism,  depends,  in  a 
of  knowledge  has  great  measure,  upon  ignorance  and  upon  the 
reUgious  se^nti-  level  of  intelligence  achieved  by  average  human 
ment.  life.     When   problems  of  the  origin  and  destiny, 

and  reason  of  things,  are  suddenly  presented  to  an  ignorant 
people,  it  experiences  profound  terrors,  ecstasies,  a  general 
heightening  of  the  sensibility  which  is  due  to  the  fact  that  a 
state  of  metaphysical  and  philosophical  curiosity  is  utterly 
unfamiliar  to  it,  constitutes  a  positive  revolution  in  its  ordinary 
habits  of  mind.  When  the  average  level  of  intellectual 
activity  is  once  raised,  metaphysical  emotion  loses  its  revolu- 
tionary character  precisely  because  the  whole  extent  of  human 
existence  has  become  imbued  with  it.  A  calm,  high,  con- 
tinuous enjoyment  takes  the  place  of  a  brief,  stormy  ecstasy  ; 
people  who  pass  their  lives  on  the  shore  of  the  ocean  cease  to 
fear  it,  or  at  least  do  not  experience  so  violent  an  emotion  in 
its  presence  as  they  did  at  the  sight  of  their  first  tempest. 
If  we  had  never  looked  upon  the  starry  heavens,  the  first  time 
we  lifted  our  eyes  to  them  we  should  be  filled  with  fear ;  the 
spectacle  of  them  to-day  calms  us,  gently  inspires  us.  To 
appease  the  violence  of  religious  sentiment,  it  must,  when  it 
has  been  purified,  be  permitted  to  permeate  the  whole  of 
human  existence,  be  always  present  with  us,  and  domesticate 
us  in  the  infinite, 

A  final  condition  precedent  to  the  success  of  a  new  religion 
would  be  that  it  should  be  really  new,  that  it  should  contribute 

Anewreli  ion  ^  ^^^^  ^*^^^  ^°  ^^^^  treasury  of  the  human  mind. 
must  be  both  novel  Among  the  wretched  attempts  at  starting  a  new 
sigm  can  .  f^it-ji  ^vhich  have  been  made  from  one  end  of  the 
world  to  the  other  in  our  days,  nothing  original  has  made  its 
appearance.  In  America  a  religion  new  in  appearance,  Mor- 
monism,  has  had  some  success  ;  it  is,  of  all  modern  attempts, 
the  only  one  which  has  relied  upon  miraculous  prophecy  and 
revelation,  such  as  are  indispensable  to  a  genuine  dogmatic 
religion  :  it  has  also  its  book,  its  Bible,  and  even  includes  in  its 
legend  some  prosaic  tale  ofmarvellouspairof  spectacles  destined 


RELIGIOUS  INDIVIDUALISM.  359 

for  the  deciphering  of  the  book.     The  God  of  Mormonism, 
who    is  rather  better  educated    than    the  God  of  the   Bible, 
possesses  some  notion  of  optics.     But  at  bottom  Mormonism 
is  simply  a  modern  edition  of  Jewish  ideas  and  customs  :  the 
whole  religion  is  a  bit  of  plagiarism,  a  resuscitation  of  super- 
anuated  legends  and  beliefs,  to  which  it  has  added  nothing  but 
what  is  trivial ;  it  is  a  religious  anachronism.     It   seems  also 
to  have  reached  the  limit  of  its  development,  the  number  of 
its   adherents   is   not    increasing.      Hindu    Brahmaism    is  an 
eclectic  and  mystic  spiritualism  without  one  really  new  idea. 
Comtism,  which  consists  of  the  rites  of  religion  and  nothing 
else,  is  an  attempt   to   maintain    life    in    the  body  after  the 
departure   of  the  soul.     The    spiritualists  are   charlatans,   or 
empirics,    who    have     been     impressed   with    certain,    as   yet 
obscure,  phenomena  of  the  nervous  system  which  they  them- 
selves are  unable  to  explain  scientifically.     But  charlatanism 
has  never  founded  anything  durable  in  the  domain  of  religion. 
To  compare  American  Mormonism   or  spiritualism  to  nascent 
Christianity  is  to  make  one's  self  ridiculous.     Humble  as  the 
beginnings  of  Christianity  were  one  must   not  be  the  dupe  of 
historical  illusion,  nor  believe  that  Christianity  owed  its  triumph 
to  a  simple  concurrence  of  happy  events ;  that  the  world,  for 
example,  according  to  M.    Kenan's   hypothesis,  might    quite 
easily   have   become    Mithraic.      The   disciples   of   a   certain 
Chrestus,  mentioned    for  the  first  time  by   Suetonius,   could 
present,  as   the   basis   of   their  as  yet  vague    beliefs,  two  in- 
comparable epic  poems,  the  Old  Testament  and  Gospels;  they 
introduced  into  the  world  a  new  system  of  morality,  which  was 
admirable  even  in  its  errors,  and  original  at  least  for  the  mass 
of   mankind  ;    and    they    contributed,  finally,  to    the   common 
stock  of  ideas  a  great  metaphysical  conception,  that  of  the 
resurrection,  which,  combined  with  current  philosophical  con- 
ceptions, necessarily    gave   birth   to   the  doctrine   of  personal 
immortality.     Christianity  conquered  by  its  own  weight,  it  was 
inevitable  that  it  should   find  its  St.  Paul  ;  the  Old  Testament 
and  the  Gospels  were  too  eminent  to  be  forgotten,  or  to  remain 
without    influence    on    human    life.      There    is    not    a    single 
example  in  the  history  of  the  world  of  a  great  masterpiece,  at 


360  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

once  literary  or  philosophical,  which  has  gone  its  way  unper- 
ceived,  without  exerting  an  influence  upon  the  progress  of 
humanity.  Every  work  which  is  sufficiently  endowed  with 
beauty  or  virtue  is  sure  of  the  future. 

It  is  among   the    masses   that    religious   movements   have 

hitherto  begun.     But  a  new  religion  could  not  come  to  us  to- 

vr        *  day    from    the    ignorant   masses  of   an    Oriental 

No  great  re-  ■'  " 

ligion  could  now-    people  nor  from  the  lower  classes  of  any  country 

tll^X  °f  ^"^°P^-  I"  h^^t^^^"  antiquity,  all  social 
masses.  classes  were  united  in  a  belief  in  naive  supersti- 

tions. Marcus  Aurelius  himself  was  obliged  to  preside  in 
great  pomp  over  a  ceremony  in  honour  of  the  serpent  of  Alex- 
ander of  Abonoteichos  which  numbered  believers  among  his 
friends.  To-day  a  bishop  in  Australia  can  refuse  to  order  a 
prayer  for  rain,  and  declare  that  atmospheric  phenomena  are 
regulated  by  inflexible  natural  laws,  and  persuade  the  believers 
in  his  diocese,  if  they  want  a  remedy  against  drought,  to 
ameliorate  their  system  of  irrigation.  These  two  facts  indi- 
cate the  thorough-going  difference  between  the  ancient  and 
modern  world.  The  contemptuous  title  of  Barbarians,  which 
the  Greeks  and  Romans  applied  to  all  other  peoples,  was  less 
than  exact,  for  the  Hebrews  and  the  Hindus  at  least  possessed 
a  more  profound  religion  than  the  Greeks  and  Romans  and 
even  in  certain  respects  a  superior  literature.  Greek  and 
Roman  civilization  is  a  rare  historical  example,  which  proves 
that  religion  is  not  necessarily  the  measure  of  the  intellectual 
development  of  a  people.  Greece  excels  principally  by  her  art 
and  science  ;  but  the  superiority  which  she  conceived  herself 
to  possess  in  other  respects  was  a  pure  illusion  founded  on 
ignorance.  The  superiority  that  we  attribute  to  ourselves  is 
demonstrated  by  our  knowledge  ;  we  are  better  acquainted  to- 
day with  the  religion  of  most  Oriental  peoples  than  they  are 
themselves;  and  we  have  earned  a  right  to  sit  in  judgment 
on  them,  and  admire  them,  and  criticise  them,  that  the  ancients 
did  not  possess.  The  distinction  between  those  who  know 
and  those  who  do  not  is  to-day  the  sole  really  serious  line  of 
demarcation  between  classes  and  nations.  And  the  line  is  one 
that  religion  cannot  pass,  for  every  complete  religion  involves 


RELIGIOUS  INDIVIDUALISM.  361 

a  general  conception  of  the  world,  and  no  such  naive  con- 
ception of  the  world  as  a  man  of  the  people  is  capable  of 
can  ever  find  acceptance  by  a  cultivated  mind.  No  great 
religion  can  germinate  and  achieve  complete  development  in 
modern  society. 

The  impossibility  of  finding  anything  new  in  the  domain  of 

mythical    religion    might   almost    be    demonstrated  a  priori ; 

nothine  more  attractive  will  ever  be  discovered  in 

Impossibility  of  ^j^    ^       ^f  ^  metaphysical  myth  than  the  sovereign 

improving  on  ex-  -'  ^      ■'  ...  . 

isting  religions  in  happiness  obtained  in  this  life  in  the  Buddhists 
*  ^^       '  Nirvana,  or  obtained   in  the  life  after  death  in 

Christian  immortality.  In  these  two  conceptions,  the  meta- 
physical  imagination  of  humanity  has  once  for  all  achieved  its 
masterpiece,  as  the  plastic  imagination  once  for  all  achieved  its 
masterpiece  in  Greek  statuary.  Something  may  be  demanded 
in  another  order  of  ideas,  one  may  exact  less  naive  hypotheses, 
hypotheses  more  neighbour  to  the  truth  ;  but  these  hypotheses 
will  never  seduce  humanity  nor  pass  over  the  world  like  a  wave 
of  light,  nor  become  transfigured  in  the  form  of  a  revelation. 
The  multitude  never  listens  to  a  revelation  that  does  not 
announce  some  glad  tidings,  some  salvation  in  this  world,  or 
the  next ;  to  be  a  prophet,  and  to  be  listened  to,  imperatively 
requires  one  to  be  a  prophet  of  good  augury.  Religious 
metaphysics,  after  its  two  immense  efforts  in  Buddhism  and 
Christianity  (Mohammedanism  is  simply  a  vulgarization  of  these 
two),  is  condemned  in  the  future  to  sterility  or  repetition,  so 
long  as  severe  and  truly  philosophical  hypotheses,  based  on 
scientific  generalization,  engage  the  attention  of  mankind. 
Infantine  hypotheses,  which  resolve  the  problems  of  the  destiny 
of  mankind  and  of  the  world  in  a  manner  altogether  consoling 
to  human  vanity,  are  condemned  to  uniformity  and  banality. 
To  discover  anything  new  in  the  realm  of  metaphysics,  the 
religious  spirit  will  have  to  abandon  the  conditions  which 
have  hitherto  existed  ;  will  have  to  deal  with  ideas  that  lie 
beyond  the  primitive  intellectual  range  of  a  Hottentot,  and 
even  abandon  all  notion  of  universality,  of  Catholicity,  in  the 
sphere  of  speculation. 

The  same  is  true  in  the  sphere  of  morals.     So  far  as  an  exalted 


3^2  NOA'-REIJGWjY   of    77/ E   FUTURE. 

and  attractive   system   of  morality  is   concerned,  can  one  go 

farther  than  Christianity  and  Buddhism,  both  of  which  preach 

exclusive  altruism,  absolute  self-abnegation  ?     All 

improving    ex-      ^hat  One  Can  do  is  really  to  take  a  few  steps  back- 

isting  religious       ward  to  moderate  certain  exaggerated  outbursts 
morality  as  such.  ...  .  ,  _      ,,,     .      .  ,    t,      , 

ot  devotion  in  the  void,  to  nt  Lliristian  and  Bud- 
dhistic morality  to  the  real  world,  to  supply  this  beautiful 
mysticism  with  a  material  body;  but  for  such  a  task  anew 
Messiah  would  be  powerless,  simple  good  sense  does  not  charm 
humanity;  the  cold,  humble,  commonplace  duties  of  everyday 
life  cannot  be  made  the  basis  of  a  great  popular  movement. 
Common-sense  is  not  contagious  after  the  fashion  of  religious 
exaltation,  which  passes  from  man  to  man  like  wildfire.  Moral 
sentiment  may  well,  in  the  course  of  time,  filter  into  us,  pass 
slowly  from  man  to  man,  rise  like  a  rising  tide,  but  so  gradu- 
ally as  scarcely  to  be  perceptible.  The  most  lasting  approaches 
to  perfection  are  often  the  most  unconscious.  It  is  a  difficult 
matter  by  a  simple  impulse  of  faith  to  climb  sheer  up  on  the 
ladder  of  civilization.  True  moral  perfection  is  often  the  precise 
opposite  of  heroic  paroxysm.  As  the  passion  for  goodness 
becomes  triumphant,  it  ceases  to  be  a  passion  :  it  becomes,  and 
must  become,  a  portion  of  our  normal  life,  of  the  flesh  that  the 
mystics  curse  ,  the  man  must  become  good  from  the  roots  of 
his  hair  to  the  soles  of  his  feet.  Thus  Buddhism  and  Chris- 
tianity, in  many  respects,  have  miscarried.  If  the  first  apostles, 
who  preached  these  religions,  should  return  among  men,  how 
unchanged  and  untransmuted  they  would  find  humanity,  after 
so  many  thousands  of  years  !  There  has  been,  no  doubt,  an 
intellectual  progress  which  has  confirmed  a  certain  number  of 
moral  ideas,  but  this  very  complex  intellectual  progress  has 
not  entirely  been  effected  by  religions.  There  was  as  yet  no 
sign  of  it  in  the  small  number  of  simple-hearted  people 
gathered  about  the  "  new  word  "  in  which  the  apostles  saw  their 
moral  and  religious  ideal  realized.  As  the  primitive  virtues  of 
this  small  knot  of  wholly  religious  and  not  at  all  scientific 
people  overspread  humanity,  they  necessarily  became  corrupt : 
and  a  morality  of  exalted  self-abnegation  could  not  succeed  be- 
yond a  small  group,  a  family,  a  convent,  artificially  sequestered 


RELIGIOUS  INDIVIDUALISM.  3^3 

from  the  rest  of  the  world ;  it  necessarily  failed  when  it 
undertook  to  appeal  to  all  mankind.  The  great  world  is 
too  inhospitable  and  shifting  a  soil ;  one  does  not  sow  seed 
in  the  sea.  A  revival  or  a  repetition  of  the  religious  epics  of 
Christianity  or  of  Buddhism  would  to-day  meet  with  an  im- 
mediate check  ;  for  it  is  the  very  essence  of  their  influence  to 
develop  the  heart  disproportionately  to  the  brain,  and,  such 
an  effect  being  a  sort  of  disturbance  of  equilibrium,  a  sort  of 
natural  monstrosity,  can  be  produced  in  individuals  indeed, 
but  not  in  races.  The  investigator  to-day,  who  adds  the  least 
item  of  truth  to  the  mass  of  scientific  and  philosophic  knowl- 
edge already  acquired,  performs  a  much  less  brilliant  but 
probably  more  definitive  work  than  the  purely  religious  work 
of  a  Messiah.  He  is  of  those  who  construct  not  in  three  days, 
but  during  successive  ages,  the  sacred  edifice  which  will  not 
fall. 

The  most  essential  incident  of  every  dogmatic  religion,  the 
cult,  is  not  less  foreign  to   the  spirit  of   modern   society  than 

„      .  docrma  itself  is.     The  foundation  of  outer  forms 

G-rowmg  an-  °  .        . 

tagonism to  ex-  of  worship,  as  we  have  seen,  is  a  crystallization 
ternais  of  worship.  ^^  custom  and  tradition  into  the  form  of  rites. 
Well,  as  has  been  said,  one  of  the  characteristic  marks  of  the 
innovating  spirit,  and  of  intellectual  superiority,  is  the  power 
of  breaking  up  associations  of  ideas,  of  liberating  one's  self  in 
a  measure  from  established  collocations  of  ideas,  of  being 
slow  to  contract  invincible  habits  of  thought,  of  precisely  not 
possessing  a  ritualistic  mind.  If  such  be  one  of  the  great 
signs  of  superiority  in  an  individual,  it  is  none  the  less  so  in  a 
people.  Progress  in  humanity  may  be  estimated  by  the 
degree  of  perfection  that  the  faculty  of  psychic  disassociation 
has  achieved.  The  instinct  for  novelty  is  then  no  longer  held 
in  check  by  the  instinct  for  ritualism-;  curiosity  may  be 
pushed  to  its  extreme  without  any  sense  of  innovating 
impie-ty  such  as  primitive  peoples  regard  it  with.  The  impor- 
tance of  ritualism  in  the  material  and  religious  life  of  a  people 
indicates  the  predominance  among  them  of  obscure  and 
unconscious  associations  of  ideas,  their  brain  is  caught  and 
enveloped  in  a  closely  woven  network  of  tradition,  in  a  tissue 


364  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

impenetrable  to  the  light  of  conscience.  On  the  contrary,  the 
progress  of  reflection  and  of  conscience  which  is  manifested 
among  modern  people  is  accompanied  by  an  enfeeblement  of 
established  custom,  of  unconscious  habit,  of  the  discipline  and 
power  of  the  past.  There  is  often  a  certain  danger,  on  the 
practical  side,  in  this  change,  because  reflection  becomes 
strong  enough  to  dissolve  habits  before  it  is  capable  of  mak- 
ing head  against  the  passions  of  the  moment.  The  power 
of  disassociation  is  intellectual,  and  is  not  in  itself  adequate 
to  the  moral  domination  and  direction  of  the  individual,  and 
whatever  may  be  the  objections,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
morals,  to  the  progress  of  reflection,  it  is  certain  that  it  sooner 
or  later  strips  rites,  religious  ceremonies,  and  the  whole 
machinery  of  worship,  of  their  sacred  character.  Etiquette  in 
the  presence  of  kings  and  gods  alike  is  destined  to  disappear. 
Whatever  is  an  observance  ceases  to  be  a  duty,  and  the  role 
of  the  priest  by  that  fact  is  seriously  changed.  The  distant 
ideal  toward  which  we  are  marching  includes  among  other 
things  the  disappearance  of  the  priesthood,  which  is  rite  per- 
sonified ;  the  god  of  the  priesthood,  who  in  certain  respects  is 
no  more  than  an  apotheosis  of  custom,  has  to-day  grown  old 
and  maintains  his  power  only  by  the  prestige  of  the  accom- 
plished fact.  It  is  in  vain  for  men  like  German,  English,  or 
American  clergymen,  or  Hindu  deists,  who  still  possess  a 
religion,  to  endeavour  to  throw  over  revelation  and  dogma,  and 
reduce  their  faith  to  a  system  of  personal  and  progressive 
beliefs,  to  be  accompanied  by  a  ritual.  The  ritual  is  an  ex- 
crescence simply,  an  almost  superstitious  habit,  mechanically 
practised  and  destined  to  disappear. 

The  movement  which,  in  certain  countries,  inclines  religion 

to  be  shy  of  dogmas  and  rites,  is  in  reality  a  movement  of 

disintegration,  not    of     reconstruction.      Human 

mo?emiunre-     beliefs,   when   they  shall  have  taken    their  final 

ligion  a  movement   form  in  the  future,  will  bear  no  mark  of  dogmatic 

sm  egra  ion.  ^^^  ritualistic  religion,  they  will  be  simply  philo- 
sophical. Among  certain  people,  it  is  true,  every  philosophical 
system  tends  to  assume  the  practical  and  sentimental  form  of 
a  system  of  beliefs  and  aspirations.     The  ideas  of  Kant  and 


RELIGIOUS  INDIVIDUALISM.  365 

Schelling,  when  they  passed  into  America,  gave  birth  to 
Emerson's  and  Parker's  transcendentahsm  ;  Spencer's  theory 
of  evolution  became,  in  America,  a  reHgion  of  Cosmism^ 
represented  by  Messrs.  Fiske,  Potter,  and  Savage.  But  all 
such  alleged  religions  are  simply  the  moving  shadow,  in  the 
domain  of  sentiment  and  action,  of  the  substance  of  intellectual 
speculation.  It  is  not  enough  to  be  of  the  same  opinion  on 
some  sociological  or  metaphysical  theory  and  then  to  congre- 
2"ate  to  the  number  of  ten  or  a  hundred  in  some  theatre  or 
temple,  to  found  a  new  religion  and  a  new  cult.  The  majority 
of  these  pretended  religions,  which  are  simply  philosophies 
and  sometimes  very  bad  philosophies,  are  open  to  Mark  Patti- 
son's  observation  on  the  congregation  of  Comtists  in  their 
chapel  in  London  :  "Three  persons  and  no  God." 

The  defects  of  these  modern  cults  appear  in  their  most 
exaggerated  form  in  secularism,  which  had  its  hour  of  success 
in  England.  Secularism  is  a  purely  atheistic 
and  utilitarian  religion,  which  has  borrowed  all  it 
could  from  the  ritual  of  the  English  Church.  This  contra- 
diction between  the  outer  form  and  the  inner  void  resulted  in 
a  positive  parody.' 

In   France  the  Comtists  have   made  the  same  attempt  to 

preserve  the  rites,  without  the  background,  of  belief.     The 

Comtist  doctrine  of  fetichism  contains  a  certain 

Comtists.  ._i-^.i  1  u      •    •  •      ■4-- 

amount    of    truth    as    characterizmg     primitive 

religion,  but  it  is  insufficient  in  its  application  to  actual,  exist- 
ing religions.  The  religions  of  the  present  day  have  devel- 
oped, gradually,  from  a  primitive  system  of  physics  to  a 
complete  system  of  metaphysics :  the  fetiches  have  been 
transmuted  into  symbols  of  the  First  Cause,  or  of  the  Final 
Cause,  Positivism  can  offer  us  no  symbol  of  this  kind  ;  its 
''Great  Fetich"  is  genuinely  a  fetich,  and  appropriate  for 
primitive  peoples  only.  "Humanity"  does  not  afford  com- 
plete satisfaction  to  one's  conception  of  causality,  nor  to 
one's  conception  of  finality.  In  regard  to  the  first,  humanity 
is  a  simple  link  in  the  infinite  chain  of  phenomena ;  in 
regard  to  the  second,  humanity  constitutes  an   end  which  is 

'  See  the  secularist  version  of  the  lU  inissa  est. 


366  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

practically  inexact  and  theoretically  insufficient :  practically 
inexact  because  almost  the  whole  of  one's  activity  relates 
to  such  and  such  a  restricted  group  of  human  beings  and 
not  to  humanity  as  a  whole ;  and  theoretically  insufficient, 
because  humanity  looks  small  in  the  presence  of  the  great 
universe.  Its  life  is  a  point  in  space,  a  point  in  time  ;  it  con- 
stitutes a  contracted  ideal,  and  to  say  the  truth,  it  is  as  vain 
for  a  race  to  regard  itself  as  its  own  end  as  for  an  individual. 
One  cannot  eternally  contemplate  one's  own  image  and  can- 
not, in  especial,  eternally  adore  it.  Love  of  humanity  is  the 
greatest  of  virtues  and  the  most  ridiculous  of  fetichisms.  The 
marriage  of  positive  science  and  blind  sentiment  cannot  pro- 
duce religion  ;  the  attempt  to  return  to  fetichism  is  an 
attempt  to  foist  the  religion  of  a  savage  upon  the  most; 
civilized  of  mankind.  Moreover,  what  we  believe  destined  to; 
subsist  in  the  future  in  a  multitude  of  forms,  and  to  replace 
religions,  is  not  pure  and  simple  sentiment,  but  sentiment 
roused  by  metaphysical  symbols,  by  speculation  and  thought. 
Religious  metaphysics  may  consist  in  involuntary  illusion,  in 
error,  in  dream ;  but  unmetaphysical  fetichism  consists  in 
voluntary  illusion,  in  cherished  error,  in  day-dream.  Augusta 
Comte  seemed  to  believe  that  we  should  always  need  as  the 
centre  of  our  system  of  worship,  an  imaginary  personification 
of  humanity,  a  great  Being,  a  great  Fetich  ;  such  a  fetichism 
would  be  a  species  of  new  category,  in  the  Kantian  sense. 
Fetichism  has  never  imposed  itself  upon  humanity  after  that 
fashion  ;  intellectually  considered,  it  was  based  on  reasons 
which  can  be  shown  to  be  false  ;  emotionally  considered,  it 
was  based  on  feelings  which  can  be  shown  to  be  perverted, 
and  can  be  rectified.  If  love  sometimes  stretches  out  toward 
personification,  toward  fetiches,  it  is  only  in  default  of  real 
persons  and  living  individuals;  such  in  our  opinion  is,  in  its 
simplest  form,  the  law  which  will  gradually  result  in  the  dis- 
appearance of  every  fetichistic  cult.  We  must  find  gods  of 
flesh  and  bone,  living  and  breathing  among  us — not  poetical 
creations  like  those  of  Homer,  but  visible  realities.  We  must 
discover  the  kingdom  of  heaven  in  the  human  soul,  a  future 
providence  in   science,  absolute  goodness  in  the   foundation 


RELIGIOUS  INDIVIDUALITY.  367 

of  life.  We  must  not  project  our  ideas  and  subjective  images 
of  things  into  the  outer  world,  and  beyond  the  limits  of  the 
outer  world,  and  love  them  with  a  sterile  love ;  but  must  love 
the  beings  of  this  world  with  an  active  affection  in  so  far  as 
they  are  capable  of  conceiving  and  realizing  the  same  ideas  as 
we.  Just  as  patriotism,  in  so  far  as  it  is  an  abstract  love,  tends 
to  disappear,  and  to  resolve  itself  into  a  general  sympathy  for 
all  our  fellow-citizens,  just  so  far  the  love  of  God  tends  to 
overflow  the  surface  of  the  earth  and  to  include  all  living  beings. 
To  know  living  beings  is  to  love  them  ;  and  thus  science,  in  so 
far  as  it  is  science  of  the  observation  of  life,  is  one  with  the  senti- 
ment which  constitutes  what  is  best  in  religion,  is  one  with  love. 
Another  religion  of  humanity,  or  rather  a  religion  of  ethics, 
has  recently  been  founded  in  New  York  by  Mr.  Felix  Adler, 

the  son  of  an  American  rabbi ;    but    Mr.  Adler, 
Ethical  Calture        ,        .  ■  ^      ^  ._i  ^        .        1  1 

Society.  \\\\o  IS  more  consistent  than  Comte,  has  deter- 

mined to  do  away  with  religious  ceremonial,  not 
less  than  with  religious  dogma.  He  has  abandoned  almost 
everything  in  the  way  of  ceremony  ;  he  has  abandoned  the  cate- 
chism, and  professes  allegiance  to  no  sacred  book.  As  a 
metaphysician  he  is  a  follower  of  Kant,  rather  than  of  Comte, 
but  makes  no  positive  affirmation  on  the  subject  of  God  and 
immortality ;  he  admits  only  the  existence  of  an  unknowable 
noumenon,  of  an  ultimate  reality  which  lies  behind  all  appear- 
ances, and  is  responsible  for  the  harmony  of  the  world.  So 
long  as  divergence  in  matters  of  belief  continues  to  become  in- 
creasingly great,  Mr.  Adler  regards  it  as  necessary  to  concen- 
trate attention  on  the  moral  law  itself,  apart  from  any  theory 
of  its  origin  or  justification.  Men  have  so  long  disputed,  he 
thinks,  about  the  basis  of  the  law,  that  the  law  itself  has  not 
received  its  due  share  of  notice.  His  movement  is  essentially 
a  practical  movement  and  appeals  to  the  conscience,  a  cry  for 
more  justice,  an  exhortation  for  the  performance  of  duty. 
The  primary  aim  of  the  society  should  be,  according  to  Mr. 

Adler,  to  reform  the   lives  of  its  own   members. 
Its  object,        TT1  f  Aoi 

He    has    founded  :     i.    A    bunday-school,    where 

instruction  is  given  in  practical  morality,  in  the  history  of  the 

most  important  religions,  and  in  the  elements  of  the  philosophy 


o 


68  NOA'-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 


of  religion  ;  2.  A  public  kindergarten  organized  on  the  Froebel 
method  ;  3.  A  school,  for  working  people's  children  between 
the  ages  of  three  and  nine.' 

Mr.   Adler's  following  at  first    consisted  of  Jews;     subse- 
quently  a    number   of    people,    without   distinction    of    race, 
Isofatype        gathered  about  him.     They  are  left  entirely  free 
destined  to  sur-      in  the  matter  of  their  personal  beliefs,  and  are 
^^^^"  united  only  in  an  ardent  desire  for  the  regenera- 

tion of  mankind.  Every  Sunday  the  faithful  congregate,  to 
listen  to  a  discourse  and  then  disperse  ;  none  but  members  of 
the  society  are  permitted  to  join  in  the  management  of  the 
institutions  founded  and  maintained  by  the  society.  This 
religion,  which  is,  ^  /'^;;/^nVrtz«^,  wholly  practical,  is  acceptable 
to  the  philosopher;  at  bottom  it  is  simply  a  great  mutual  aid 
temperance  society.  The  only  objection  that  can  be  urged 
against  it  is  that  it  is  somewhat  prosaic,  but  it  is  certainly  one 
of  the  forms  of  social  activity  which  are  destined  to  succeed 
ritualistic  religions. 

Certain   partisans  of  religious   revival    regard    socialism   as 

their  last  hope.     Socialistic  ideas  ought,  in  their  judgment,  to 

.    .    .     ,         eive    religion    a   fresh  start    and  .supply  it  with 
Antiquity  of  ^  °  . 

faith  in  socialism  an  impetus  hitherto  unknown.  This  conception 
as  a  panacea.  ^vears  an  air  of  originality,  but,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  it  is  quite  the  reverse  of  original.  The  great  catholic 
religions,  ^uddhism  and  Christianity^jvvere  in  the  beginning 
socialistic,  they  preached  universal  partition  of  goods,  an^ 
poverty  ;  it  was  by  means  of  so  doing  that  they  were  in  part 
enabled  to  spread  with  such  rapidity.  In  reality  the  instant 
that  the  period  of  propagandism  succeeded  the  period  of 
struggle  for  permission  to  exist,  these  religions  did  everything 
within  their  power  to  become  individualistic  even  at  the  ex- 
pense of  inconsistency  ;  they  ceased  to  promise  equality  on 
earth  and  relegated  it  to  heaven  or  to  Nirvana. 

'  Indigent  pupils  are  clothed  and  fed  ;  the  instruction  is  gratuitous ;  the  school 
contains  at  present  one  hundred  pupils,  having  begun  with  eight.  An  industrial 
museum  is  attached  to  it.  The  society  also  sends  out  district  nurses  to  attend  the 
sick  in  the  poorer  quarters  of  New  York. 


RELIGIOUS  INDIVIDUALISM.  369 

Do  we  therefore   believe  that   socialistic  ideas  will  play  no 

part  in   the   future,   and  is  it  not  conceivable  that   a   certain 

„   .  ,.  mysticism  mi<z:ht  form  an  alliance  with  socialism, 

Socialism  un-  j  j=> 

realizable  except    and  both  lend  and  borrow  force  by  so  doing  ?     A 
byaseectew.       niystical    socialism  is  by   no  means    unrealizable 
under  certain  conditions,  and,  far  from  constituting  an  obstacle 
to  religious  free-thought,  it   might  become  one  of  its   most 
important   manifestations.      But   what  has  hitherto    rendered 
socialism   impracticable  and    Utopian   is  that   it  has  aimed  at 
subjugating   the  whole   of   mankind,    rather  than   some   small 
social  group.     What  has  been  aimed  at  is  state  socialism ;  the 
case  has  been  the  same  in  the  matter  of  religion.     But  systems 
of  socialism   and  of  religious  doctrine  must,  in  the   future  at 
least,  be  addressed  to  small  groups  and  not  to  confused  masses  ; 
must  be  made  the  basis  of  manifold  and  various  associations 
in  the  bosom  of  society.     As  its  most  earnest  partisans  recog- 
nize, socialism  presupposes  for  its  success  a  certain  average  of 
virtue,  that  may  well  obtain  among  some  hundreds  of  men  but 
not  among   some   millions.     It  endeavours   to  establish  a  sort 
of   special   providence,  which  would  be  quite  incompetent   to 
manage   the  affairs  of  the  world  but  may  well  watch  over  the 
interests  of  a  neighbourhood.     Socialism  aims  more  or  less  at 
playing  the  part  of  fate,  at  predetermining  the  destiny  of  the 
individual,  at  supplying  each  individual  with  a  certain  average 
amount  of  happiness  which  he  can  neither  increase  nor  dimin- 
ish.    Socialism  is  the  apotheosis  of  state  interference,  and  the 
world  in   general  is   not  disposed  to  worship  it ;  its  ideal   is  a 
life  which  is  completely  foreseen,  insured,  with  the  element  of 
fortune  and  of  hope  left  out,  with  the  heights  and  the  depths  of 
human  life  levelled  away — an  existence  somewhat  utilitarian  and 
uniform,  regularly  plotted  off  like  the  squares  on  a  checker  board, 
incapable  of  satisfying  the  ambitious  desires  of  the  mass  of  man- 
kind.    Socialism  is  to-day  advocated  by  the  rebels  in  society.    Its 
success,  however,  would  depend  on  the  most  peaceable,  the  most 
conservative, the  most  bourgeois  people  in  the  world;  it  supplies 
no  sufficient  outlet  for  the  love  of  risk, of  staking  one's  everything, 
of  playing  for  the  height  of  fortune  against  the  depth  of  misery, 
which  is  one  of  the  essential  factors  of  human  progress. 


370  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

Practical  experiments  in   socialism  are  being  made    every- 
day; there   is  in  France   the  phalansterian  association   of  M, 
Godin  ;  in  America  there  are  the  associations  by 
Experiments  in    ^j^^  followers  of  Cabct,  not  to  speak  of  others  of 

socialism.  * 

a  more  purely  religious  character,  such  as  those 

of  the  Quakers,  Shakers,  etc.;  and  finally,  there  are  co-opera- 
tive societies  of  various  kinds.  These  avowedly  or  unavowedly 
socialistic  experiments  have  never  succeeded  except  when 
their  promoters  were  willing  very  rigorously  to  limit  their 
numbers;  certain  intellectual  and  moral  defects  in  the  mem- 
bers must  inevitably  in  every  case  have  proved  fatal  to  them. 
Socialism  is  possible  only  in  a  small  society  of  the  elect. 
Even  the  theorists  who  once  regarded  profit-sharing  as  the 
universal  panacea  recognize  to-day  that  profit-sharing  con- 
stitutes a  remedy  in  some  cases  only  ;  that  the  labouring  classes 
are  not,  as  a  whole,  either  patient,  or  painstaking  enough  to 
fulfil  the  very  simple  conditions  that  profit-sharing  demands. 
They  are  unfit  for  corporate  life,  they  are  hard  repellent 
individuals,  they  are  elements  of  disintegration  ;  when  a  small 
socialistic  society  finds  them  on  its  list  of  members,  it  excludes 
them ;  if  mankind  as  a  whole  formed  one  great  socialistic 
society,  it  also  would  be  obliged  to  exclude  them.  To  univer- 
salize socialism  is  to  destroy  it. 

Every    scientific    discovery    passes   through    three    distinct 

stages  :  the  stage  of   pure   theory,  of  application   on  a  small 

scale  in  the  laboratory,  of  application  on  a  grand 

Fntnre  of  sz'dX^    in    the    world  of    business.     It    frequently 

socialism.  ,  ,         ,  r  •  i  • 

happens   that    the     development    of    an    idea    is 

arrested  in   the   sphere   of  theory,  that   it  does  not   enter  into 

the  sphere  of  practice  at  all,  or  that,  completely  successful  in 

the    laboratory,  it    miscarries    when    the    attempt  is  made   to 

apply  it  to  business.     If  this  holds  true  of  scientific  ideas,  of 

devices  that  depend  for  their  success  upon  the  plasticity  of 

inert  matter  only,  which  we  may  bend  to  our  will,  a  fortiori  it 

must  be  true  of  sociological   ideas,  of  experiments,  of  devices 

that  depend  for  their  success  on  the  plasticity  of  so  variable, 

so  heterogeneous  a  substance  as  human  nature.     Socialism  is 

still,  for  the  most  part,  at  the  theoretical  stage  ;  and  even  as  a 


UJNiVi-JRSITY 


RELIGIOUS  INDIVIDUALISM.     ^**==***^7I 

theory  socialism  is  very  vague  and  not  very  consistent  and, 
when  the  effort  is  made  to  put  it  into  practice,  the  difference 
between  experiments  in  the  laboratory,  among  conditions  that 
the  experimenter  can  in  a  measure  determine  and  control,  and 
in  the  great  world  in  which  everything  is  determined  and  con- 
trolled for  him,  must  be  remembered.  The  state  which  yields 
to  the  seduction  of  some  charming  socialistic  theory,  and 
endeavours,  as  it  will  endeavour,  to  realize  it,  will  inevitably 
be  ruined.  Social  experiments  cannot  be  attempted  by  the 
state — not  even  if  they  are  experiments  in  religion,  or  rather  in 
especial  not  if  they  are  experiments  in  religion.  Some  experi- 
ments may  at  most  be  observed  by  the  state  and  followed 
with  interest  by  it  ;  nay,  the  state  may  even  in  certain  cases 
encourage  the  most  interesting  of  them  and  subsidize  them  as 
it  does  certain  industrial  enterprises.  We  are  persuaded  that 
socialism  in  the  future,  like  religion  in  the  past,  will  appear  in 
many  different  forms.  There  will  arise  a  number  of  concep- 
tions of  an  ideal  society,  each  of  which  is  realizable  in  special 
circumstances,  and  by  people  of  some  special  disposition. 
Human  society  which  to-day,  beyond  the  limits  of  convents 
and  monasteries  (which  consist  in  artificial  groupings  of 
individuals  of  the  same  sex),  presents  a  certain  uniformity  of 
type,  may  well  at  some  later  date,  owing  to  complete  liberty 
of  association,  and  to  the  spread  of  personal  initiative,  present 
a  great  variety  of  types.  Socialism  will  not  result  in  the 
founding  of  a  religion,  but  it  may  well  result  in  the  founding 
of  a  number  of  associations  dominated  respectively  by  some 
metaphysical  or  moral  idea.  Socialism  will  thus  contribute 
to  that  multiplicity  and  diversity  of  beliefs  which  does  not 
excludie  but  rather  encourages  their  practical  application. 

The  future,  therefore,  will  leave  the  human  mind,  as  time 

goes  on,  more  and  more  at  liberty;  will  permit  the  individual 

to  do  increasingly  as   he  likes  so  long  as  he  does 

NccGs^itv  of 

allowing  for  a        "^^  violate  the  rights  of  anybody  else.     What  is 

multiplicity  of       the  highest  social  ideal  ?     Does  it  lie  purelv  and 
conflicting  ideals.       ....  .  ^     ,  .     ' 

snnply  m  the  practice  of  the  necessary  virtues  or 

of  a  half   conscious  morality,  an    unreflecting  benignity,  com- 
pounded of  ignorance  and  custom  ?     This  social  ideal  is  realized 


372  NOX-RELIGION   OF    THE  FUTURE. 

in  certain  countries  in  the  Orient,  where  Buddhism  is  dominant, 
and  the  people  are  so  gentle  that  years  pass  without  a  homi- 
cide;    and  yet  life  in    these  countries  in   nowise  appeals  to 
us  as    ideal.     To  this  sort  of  morality  must  be  added  some 
satisfaction  of  the   principal  desire  of  mankind,  of  the  desire 
for  economic  ease  and  for  practical  happiness,  and  even  that 
would  not  be  enough  ;  for  that  much  is  realized  in  corners  of 
Switzerland,   of    Portugal,    in    primitive    countries  like    Costa 
Rica,  where    poverty  is  unknown.      Artists   dream    of   a   life 
devoted  entirely  to   art,  to  the    beautiful,  of  a  life  which  is 
hostile  to  prosaic  and  practical  virtue,  and  this  ideal  was  realized 
in  the  Renaissance  :  the  Renaissance  was  distinguished  by  an 
extraordinary   efflorescence    of   aesthetic    instinct    and    moral 
depravity,  and  we  in   nowise   desire  to  return  to  it.     And  if 
science,  which  is  the  modern  ideal,  should  become  absolute, 
we  should  see  a  society  of  biases  Fausts  which  would  not  be 
more  enviable  perhaps  than  other  societies.     No  ;  a  complete 
social  ideal  must  neither  consist  in  bare  morality  nor  in  simple 
economic  well-being,  nor  in  art  alone,  nor  in  science  alone — it 
must   consist  in  all   of  these  together  ;  its  ideal  must  be  the 
greatest  and  most  universal  conceivable.     This  ideal  is  that  of 
progress,and  progress  cannot  take  place  in  one  direction  only  at  a 
time;  whoever  advances  in  one  direction  only  will  soon  retreat. 
A  point  of  light  shines  in  all  directions  simultaneously.     The 
excellence  of  religion  cannot  be  demonstrated  by  showing  that 
it  favours  some  one  species  of  human  activity  ;  morality,  for 
example,  or  art.      It    is  not  enough  to  make  man  moral  as 
Christianity    and    Buddhism    did,  nor   to    excite    his  aesthetic 
imagination  as  Paganism   did.     Not   one  but  all  of  his  facul- 
ties    must    be    stimulated,  and    there   is  but  one  religion  that 
can   do  it  ;  and  that   religion    each    must  create   for  himself. 
Whoever  feels  attracted  by  a  life  similar  to  that  of  a  priest 
will    do    well    to    become    a    Christian    and    even    a    Quaker, 
and    the    artist    will    do   well   to   become   a   pagan.     What    is 
certain    is    that    no    one    of    the    deities    which    mankind  has 
^J^     created  and  worshipped    is  all-sufificing ;    mankind    needs   all 
of  them   and  something  more,  for  human  thought  has  out- 
grown its  gods. 


RELIGIOUS  IXDIVIDUALISM.  373 

Under   the   sounding  domes   of  old   cathedrals,  the   echoes 

are  so  numerous  that  an  immense  screen  has  sometimes  to  be 

stretched  across  the  nave  to  break  the  reverber- 
Liberty  the  con-        .  ,        ,  .        ,  . 

ditionofknowl-      ations  and  enable  the  priest  s  voice  alone  to  reach 

^^^^'  the  faithful.     This  screen  which  is  invisible  from 

below,  which  isolates  the   sacred  word  and   deadens  all  other 

sound,  is   stretched  not    only  across  the   cathedral   nave    but 

across  the  heart  of  every  true  believer.     It  must  be  torn  away  ; 

every  voice   and  word  must  be  free  to  attain  the  ear   of  man ; 

the  sacred  word  rises  from  no  one  throat,  but  is  the  symphony 

of  all  the  voices  that  sound  beneath  the  dome  of  heaven. 

I  was    talking   one  day  with    M.   Renan   upon  the  gradual 

decrease  in  the  power  of  religion,  on  the  silence  that  has  fallen 

on    the    divine    word,    which    formerly    drowned 

Decline  of  the        jj  other  sounds.     To-day,  it  is  the  word  of  nature 

power  of  religion,  ^  ' 

and  humanity,  of  free-thought  and  free  senti- 
ment, which  is  taking  the  place  of  oracles  and  of  supernatural 
revelation,  of  dogmatic  religion.  M.  Renan,  with  the  openness 
of  mind  which  is  habitual  with  him,  and  which  partakes  indeed 
largely  of  scepticism,  took  up  at  once  my  point  of  view. 
"  Yes,"  he  said,  "  we  are  all  marching  toward  non-religion. 
After  all,  why  should  not  humanity  do  without  religious  dog- 
mas ?  Speculation  will  take  the  place  of  religion.  Even  at  the 
present  day,  among  advanced  peoples,  dogmas  are  disinte- 
grating, the  incrustations  of  human  thought  are  breaking  up. 
Most  people  in  France  are  already  non-religious;  men  of  the 
people  hardly  believe  more  than  professed  men  of  science ; 
they  possess  their  little  fund  of  ideas,  more  or  less  profound, 
on  which  they  live,  without  help  from  the  priest.  In  Germany 
the  work  of  decomposition  is  far  advanced.  In  England  it  is 
-only  in  its  beginnings,  but  it  is  moving  rapidly.  Christianity 
is  everywhere  giving  place  to  free-thought.  Buddhism 
and  Hinduism  are  doing  the  same  ;  in  India  the  mass  of 
intelligent  men  are  free-thinkers,  in  China  there  is  no  state 
religion.  It  will  take  a  long  while,  but  religion  will  in  the  end 
disappear,  and  one  may  already  imagine  for  Europe  a  time 
when  it  will  be  a  thing  of  the  past.  .  .  Islam  is  the  one 
black  soot  on  the  horizon.     The  Turks  are  narrow,  rebellious 


374  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

against  reasoning,  hostile  to  everything  that  lies  beyond  literal 
faith  .  .  .  but  if  they  will  not  follow  us  we  shall  simply  leave 
them  behind,  and  I  think  we  shall  be  obliged  to  do  so."     We 
should  add  that,  if  some  Christians  and  Buddhists  show  them- 
selves as  backward  as  the  Turks,  we  shall  leave  them  behind 
also.     Those  members  of  mankind  who  think,  see,  and  move 
forward,  are  always  obliged  to  drag  a  long  train  of  those  who 
neither  see,  nor  think,  nor  wish   to  move  forward.     They  do 
move  forward,  however,  in  the  long  run.     Professed  advocates 
of  the  different  positive  and  dogmatic  religions  count  every 
day  for  less  and  less  among  the  truly  active  members  of  the 
human  species ;  and  we  ask  nothing  better.      Whoever  does 
not  count  for  progress  practically    does    not   exist,  and   ulti- 
mately will  not  exist.     Activity  of  thought  is  becoming  more 
and  more  a  condition  of  existence ;  the  preponderant  role  that 
religions  played  in  the  past   is  to  be  explained  by  the  fact 
that  religion  offered  almost  the   sole  field  of  intellectual   and 
moral  activity — the  sole  issue  for  the  most  elevated  tendencies 
of    our  being.     At   that   time    there    lay  beyond    the    limits 
of  religion  nothing  but  the  grossest  and  most  material  occupa- 
tions ;  there  was  no  known  middle  ground  between  heaven  and 
earth.     To-day  this  middle  ground  has  been  discovered — the 
ground  of  thought.     Science  and  art  are  born  ;  and  open  before 
us   an    infinite    perspective,    where    each    of  us   may    find  an 
opportunity  to  employ  the  best  of  our  gifts.     Science  offers  a 
field  for  disinterestedness  and  research,  but  does   not  tolerate 
vagaries  of  the  imagination.     It  encourages  enthusiasm,  but  not 
delirium,  and  possesses  a  beauty  of  its  own,  the  beauty  of  truth. 

//.  Religions  anomy  and  the  substitution  of  doubt  for  faith. 

I.  We  have  proposed  as  the  moral  ideal  what  we  have  called 

moral   anomy — the   absence    of  any  fixed    moral   rule.'     We 

believe    still    more  firmly  that    the  ideal    toward 

Eeligious  which   every   reliction  ought  to   tend   is   religious 

anomy.  y  &  &  c>^        ^ 

anomy,  the  complete  enfranchisement  of  the  indi- 
vidual in  all  religious   matters,  the  redemption  of  his  thought, 
which  is  more  precious  than  his  life,  the  suppression  of   dog- 
'  See  our  Esquisse  d'une  morale  sans  obligatio7i  ni  sanction. 


RELIGIOUS  INDIVIDUALISM.  375 

matic  faith  in  every  form.  Instead  of  accepting  ready-made 
dogmas,  we  should  each  of  us  be  the  makers  of  our  own  creed. 
Whatever  Montaigne  may  say,  faith  is  a  softer  pillow  for  idle- 
ness than  doubt.  Faith  is  a  species  of  nest  in  which  idleness 
lies  in  shelter,  and  hides  its  head  under  the  warmth  and  dark- 
ness of  a  protecting  wing  ;  nay,  it  is  a  nest  prepared  in  advance, 
like  those  that  are  sold  in  the  markets  and  made  by  men,  for 
birds  that  are  kept  in  cages.  We  believe  that  in  the  future  • 
man  will  be  increasingly  unwilling  to  live  in  cages  and  that,  if 
he  needs  a  nest,  he  will  construct  it  himself  twig  by  twig  in  the 
open  air,  and  abandon  it  when  he  is  weary  of  it,  and  remake  it, 
if  necessary,  every  springtime,  at  each  new  stage  of  his  thought. 
Is  religious  anomy,  or  the  absence  of  religion,  synonymous 
wnth  scepticism  ?  Since  the  disappearance  of  Pyrrhonism  and 
„  ,.  .  ^nesideinism,  scepticism  is  simply  a  word  which 

Keligious  ^  .....  J 

anomy  and  scepti-  serves   as   a   label  for  the    most  dissimilar   doc- 
*^^^™'  trines.     Greek     sceptics     were    fond    of    calling 

themselves  seekers,  Z-qT-qjLKoi  \  a  name  w^hich  is  appropriate  to 
every  philosopher  as  distinguished  from  believer.  But  how 
the  term  scepticism  in  its  modern  negative  acceptation  is 
abused  !  If  you  do  not  belong  to  some  definite  system  of 
thought,  you  are  at  once  set  down  as  a  sceptic.  But  nothing 
is  further  removed  from  a  superficial  scepticism  than  the 
sympathetic  mind  which,  precisely  because  it  embraces  so 
large  a  horizon,  refuses  to  confine  itself  to  some  one  narrow 
point  of  view,  as  in  a  glade  a  hundred  feet  square  or  in  a 
diminutive  valley  between  two  mountains.  "  You  are  not 
dogmatic  enough,"  the  philosopher  is  sometimes  told.  "To 
what  system  do  you  belong?"  "  In  what  class  of  thinking 
insects  do  you  belong?"  "To  what  card  in  our  collection 
must  you  be  pinned  ? "  A  reader  always  wants  to  ask  an 
author  a  certain  number  of  conventional  questions.  What  do 
you  think  of  such  and  such  a  problem  ?  Of  such  and  such 
another?  You  are  not  a  spiritualist ;  are  you  then  a  material- 
ist? You  are  not  an  optimist;  are  you  then  a  pessimist? 
One  must  reply,  yes  or  no,  without  explanatory  amplifica- 
tion. But  what  I  think  is  of  small  importance,  even  for 
myself;  my  point  of  view  is  not  the  centre  of  the  universe. 


376  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

What  I  am  seeking  to  Icain,  what  you  are  seeking  to  learn, 
is  the  contents  of  human  thought  in  all  its  variety  and  com- 
plexity. If  I  study  myself  it  is  not  because  I  am  myself,  but 
because  I  am  a  man  like  other  men.  If  I  watch  my  own  little 
soap  bubble,  it  is  because  it  contains  a  ray  of  the  sun;  my 
object  is  precisely  to  pass  beyond  the  limits  of  my  own  hori- 
zon and  not  to  remain  within  them.  More  than  that,  people 
twhose  ideas  are  fixed,  clear-cut,  absolute,  are  exactly  those 
i.who  have  no  ideas  of  their  own.  Revelation,  intuition, 
religion,  categorical  and  exclusive  af^rmation,  are  notions 
hostile  to  modern  thought,  which  is  in  its  very  essence  pro- 
gressive. There  are  two  sorts  of  men :  those  who  remain  on 
the  surface  of  things  and  those  who  sound  the  depths  of 
things.  There  are  superficial  minds  and  serious  minds.  In 
France  almost  all  those  whom  we  designate  as  sceptics  or  as 
biases  are  superficial  minds,  with  an  affectation  of  profundity. 
They  are  also  often  practical  Epicureans.  There  will  always 
be  people  ready  to  say,  with  a  certain  hero  of  Balzac's:  "  A 
good  fire,  a  good  table  ;  behold  the  ideal  of  human  life  !  " 
Waiting  for  dinner  is  the  sole  occupation  of  the  day.  But 
there  will  always  be  other  people  for  whom  life  consists  in  an 
indefatigable  activity. 

The  number  of  sceptics  will  not  necessarily  be  increased  by 

the    final   decay   and    disappearance    of  religious   scepticism, 

which  is  a  compound  of  lightness  and  ignorance. 

Feebleness  of      resting  on  the  same  foundation  as  religious  prej- 

scepticism.  =»  i  •  ,        i  ■ ,  i  •      i 

udice,  on  the  absence  of   a  solid    philosophical 

education.  Really  serious  minds  are  either  positive  or  specu- 
lative;  a  too  positive,  common-sense  spirit  might,  if  it  became 
general  in  society,  menace  it  with  a  certain  intellectual 
debasement;  but  religion  w^ould  not  hinder  its  development: 
witness  America.  The  true  means  of  checking  the  positive 
spirit  is  to  cultivate  the  sense  of  beauty  and  the  love  of  art. 
To  speculative  minds,  on  the  other  hand,  belongs  the  future  of 
humanity ;  but  far  from  being  dependent  upon  dogma,  specu- 
lation can  flourish  only  in  its  absence.  It  is  the  life  of  specu- 
lation to  ask  questions  about  the  deepest  concerns  of  human 
life ;    dogma  provides   ready-made   answers,  and    speculation 


RELIGIOUS  INDIVIDUALISM.  317 

cannot  accept  them.     The  disappearance  of  positive  religions 
will    give    scientific    and     metaphysical    speculation   a   fresh 
impulse.     The  speculative  spirit  is  the  extreme  opposite  both 
of  the  spirit  of   faith  and  of  the   spirit  of  absolute   negation. 
An  inquirer  may  suspect  his  own  resources,  may  recognize  his 
own    powerlessness,  but  he    will    never    give    up    the  search- 
Strong    minds  will   never    be  discouraged    or    disgusted,   will 
never  be  followers  of  Merim^e  or  Beyle.     In   active  mental 
labour  there  is  something  which  is  worth  more  than  faith  and 
doubt  together,  as  there  is  in  genius  something  which  is  worth 
more  at  once  than  the  somewhat  silly  admiration  of  the  multi- 
tude and  the  disdainful  criticism  of  pretended  connoisseurs  ; 
excess  of  criticism  and  excess  of  credulity  are  alike  powerless. 
It  is  eood  to  be  aware  of  one's  own  weakness,  but  from  time  to 
time  only;    one  must  turn  one's  eyes  toward    the    limits    of 
human    intelligence,    but    not    rest    them    there,    on    pain    of 
paralysis.     "  Man,"  says  Goethe,  "  should  believe  firmly  that 
the  incomprehensible  will  become  comprehensible ;  but  for  that 
he  would  cease  to  scrutinize  and  to  try."     In  spite  of  the  num- 
ber of  ideas  which  make  their  entrance  into  and  exit  from  the 
human  mind,  which  rise  and  set  on  the  human  horizon,  which 
flame  up  and  burn  out,  there  is,  in  every  human  mind,  an  ele- 
ment of  eternity.     On  certain  autumn  nights  one  may  observe 
a  veritable    shower   of   aerolites  ;    hundreds   of   stars   detach 
themselves  from  the  zenith  like  luminous  flakes  of  snow  ;  the 
dome  of  heaven  itself  seems  to  have  given  way,  the  worlds 
hungf  above  the  earth  seem  to  have  broken  loose,  and  all  the 
stars  at  once  to  be  descending  and  about  to  leave  the  great 
firmament  of  night  unvariegated,  opaque  ;  but  the  falling  stars 
go  out  one  by  one,  and  the  serene  brilliancy  of  the  fixed  stars 
still  remains  ;  the  storm  has  passed  beneath  them  and  has  not 
troubled  the  tranquil  splendour  of  their  rays,  nor  the  incessant 
appeal  of  their  fixity  and  glory.     The  appeal  is  one  that  man 
will  always  respond  to ;  under  the  open  sky  and  the  pressure 
of   the    problem    brought    home    to    him  by   the   great  stars, 
man  does  not  feel  himself    feeble    unless  he  pusillanimously 
shuts  his  eyes.     Humanity  will  lose   none  of  its  intellectual 
power  by  the  disappearance  of  religious  faith ;  its  horizon  will 


378  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

grow  wider  simply,  and  the  luminous  points  in  the  immensity 
of  space  will  grow  more  numerous.  True  genius  is  specula- 
tive, and  in  whatever  environment  true  genius  is  placed  it  will 
speculate ;  it  has  speculated  hitherto  despite  of  all  that 
orthodox  faith  could  do,  it  will  speculate  still  more  actively  in 
spite  of  all  that  scepticism  can  do. 

And  the  practical  side  of  human  life  has  nothing  to  fear 
from  the  growth  of  the  speculative  spirit.     Given  minds  suffi- 
ciently large,  and   the   fact  that   they  look   down 

Speculation  and   upon 'the  earth  from  a  height,  does  not  prevent 
practice.  ^  ... 

them    from   seeing  human   life  as  it  is  and   as   it 

should    be.     Decidedly    one    must    be    a    man,    a    patriot,    a 

"  tellurian,"  as  Amiel  said,  with  some  contempt ;  to  be  so  may 

appear  to  be  a  small  function  in  the  totality  of  things,  but  an 

upright  spirit  will  not  fulfil  it  with  less  exactitude  because  he 

perceives  its  limits  and  its  restricted   importance.     Nothing  is 

in  vain,  and  a  fortiori  no  being  is  in  vain  ;  small  functions  are 

as  necessary  as  great.     If  a  man  of  intelligence  happens  to  be 

a    porter    or    a    scavenger,   he  should   apply    himself  to   that 

profession   with   as   much  devotion  as  to  any  other.     To   do 

well  what  one   has  to   do,  however  humble  it   may  be,  is  the 

first  of  duties.     An  ant  of  genius  ought  not  to  bring  to  the 

ant-hill  a  grain  the  less,  even  though  he  were  capable  of  taking 

cognizance  of  the  eternities  of  time  and  space. 

II.  Although  the  suppression  of  religious  dogma  does  not 
lead  to  scepticism,  it  decidedly   does  lead   to  .doubt,  and  we 

T.   ,,     J.         believe   that  the  modern   sense   of   doubt   repre- 

Doubt  as  Qis-  _        _  ^ 

tingnished from  sents  a  higher  stage  of  civilization  than  the  faith 
scepticism.  ^^     dogma     that     distinguished     former     times. 

Religious  faith  is  distinguished  from  philosophic  belief  by  a  sub- 
jective difference.  If  the  man  of  faith  is  not  altogether  blind,  at 
least  he  perceives  but  one  point  in  the  intellectual  horizon  ;  he 
has  focussed  his  intelligence  upon  some  one  plot  of  ground,  and 
the  rest  of  the  world  does  not  exist  for  him  ;  he  returns  day 
after  day  to  his  chosen  corner,  to  the  little  nest  he  has  made 
for  his  thoughts  to  dwell  in,  as  we  said  above — returns  as  a 
dove  returns  to  the  dovecote  and  sees  but  it  in  the  immensity 


RELIGIOUS  INDIVIDUALISM.  379 

of  space.  Fanaticism  marks  a  still  further  degree  of  contrac- 
tion in  one's  intellectual  vision.  On  the  contrary,  the  greater 
the  progress  of  reflection  in  the  history  of  the  human  race, 
the  more  completely  religious  faith  becomes  merged  in,  and 
subordinated  to,  philosophic  conviction;  the  two  cease  to  be 
distinguishable  except  by  a  difference  in  the  degree  of  doubt 
that  they  involve,  a  doubt  which  itself  rests  upon  a  clearness  in 
one's  vision  of  things.  As  reflection  becomes  more  profound, 
it  manifests  here  as  everywhere  its  destructive  influence 
upon  instinct ;  everything  that  is  instinctive,  primitive,  and 
naive  in  faith  disappears,  and,  along  with  it,  disappears  every- 
thing that  constituted  its  strength,  that  made  it  so  powerful  in 
the  human  heart.  True  strength  lies  in  the  human  reason,  in 
complete  self-consciousness,  in  a  consciousness  of  the  problems 
of  life,  of  their  complexity,  of  their  difificulties. 

Faith,   as    we  have   seen,    consists  in  affirming  things    not 
capable    of    objective   verification,    with    the   same   subjective 

satisfaction  as  if  they  could  be  verified  :  in  attrib- 
offaitL^'^'^^^'"''    uting  to  the  uncertain  as  great  a  value  as  to  the 

certain — nay,  perhaps  a  greater  value.  The  ideal 
of  the  philosopher,  on  the  contrary,  would  be  a  perfect  corre- 
spondence between  conclusiveness  of  evidence  and  degree 
of  belief.  The  intellectual  satisfaction  that  we  take  in  our 
beliefs,  the  degree  of  tenacity  with  which  we  hold  them, 
should  vary  precisely  with  the  completeness  and  certainty  of 
our  knowledge.  A  primitive  intelligence  cannot  be  content 
to  remain  in  suspense,  it  must  decide  one  way  or  the  other; 
it  is  the  mark  of  a  more  perfect  intelligence  to  remain  in 
doubt  in  reference  to  what  is  doubtful.  Credulity  is  intellect- 
ual original  sin. 

Employing  the  word  certitude  strictly  for  what  is  certain, 
and  meaning  by  belief  what    is    plausible  or    probable  only, 

when  one  is  investigating  some  mere  matter  of 

Uncertainty  of      ^^^^    ^^^  ^        -^^  ^j^^  ^^^  y^^  ^|^jg  ^^  g         positively 

metaphysics,  '  -^  -ii 

such  and  such  is  certain,  is  what  the  future  will 

affirm  on  this  point ;  but,  when  the  degree  of  certitude  involved 

amounts  to  no  more  than  to  probability  or  even  possibility, 

and  to  metaphysical  possibility  at  that,  it  is  ridiculous  to  say: 


o 


So  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 


"  I  believe  such  and  such  a  thing  ;  such  and  such  is  therefore  the 
dogma  that  everybody  ought  to  adopt."  Such  positive  basis 
for  metaphysical  inductions  as  exists  is  too  uneven  not  to  result 
in  a  divergence  in  the  lines  of  the  hypotheses  which  rise  from 
it  into  the  obscure  heights  of  the  unknown ;  no  two  of  our 
glances  toward  the  infinite  are  parallel ;  our  attempts  at  solv- 
ing metaphysical  problems  are  little  more  than  rockets  shot 
capriciously  into  the  sky.  The  philosopher  can  do  little 
more  than  take  cognizance  of  the  divergence  of  rival  hypoth- 
eses, and  of  their  equality  and  equal  insufificiency  in  the  eye 
of  reason. 

But  the  problem  of  action  presents  itself  to  the  philosopher 
no  less  than  to  the  rest  of  mankind.     For  purposes  of  conduct 
Postulatsf        some  one  among  the  diverging  lines  of  human 
purposes  of  prac-     speculation  must  be  chosen  ;  philosophic  thought 
^^^'  must  be    left  to  describe  its  curves  and  circles 

above  our  heads  while  we  walk,  if  not  sure-footedly  at  least  in 
some  definite  direction,  upon  the  earth.  One  is  sometimes  for 
practical  purposes  obliged  to  rely  on  doubtful  premises  as  if 
they  were  certain.  Such  a  choice,  however,  is  simply  an 
inferior  and  exceptional  means  of  choosing  among  hypotheses 
which  one  has  neither  the  time  nor  the  power  exactly  to  test. 
One  cuts  loose  from  one's  doubts,  but  the  expedient  is  a 
purely  practical  one;  cutting  the  Gordian  knots  of  life  cannot 
be  adopted  as  one's  habitual  intellectual  procedure.  Faith 
which  leans  with  an  equal  sense  of  security  upon  the  certain 
and  the  uncertain,  the  evident  and  the  doubtful,  should  be  but 
a  provisional  state  of  mind  forced  upon  one  by  some  practical 
necessity.  One  ought  never,  so  to  speak,  to  believe  once  for  all, 
to  subscribe  one's  allegiance  forever.  Faith  should  never  be 
regarded  as  more  than  a  second  best,  and  a  provisional  second 
best.  The  instant  that  action  is  no  longer  necessary,  one  must 
revert  to  one's  doubt,  to  one's  scruples,  to  all  the  precautions 
of  science.  Kant  did  violence  to  the  natural  order  of  things 
when  he  ascribed  to  faith  and  morals  a  predominance  over 
reasoning ;  when  he  gave  to  the  practical  reason,  whose  com- 
mandments may  be  the  expression  simply  of  acquired  habits, 
control  over  the   critical   and    scientific    reason.       His  moral 


RELIGIOUS  INDIVIDUALISM.  381 

philosophy  consists  in  erecting  a  foregone  conclusion  into  a  rule, 
whereas,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  one  ought  not  to  make  up  one's 
mind  definitely  until  all  the  evidence  is  in,  until  every  alterna- 
tive choice  has  been  considered  and  rejected,  if  at  all,  on  good 
grounds;  our  beliefs  should  be  relied  upon  in  practice  exactly 
in  proportion  to  their  probability  in  the  actual  state  of  our 
knowledge.  Alternatives  do  not  exist  in  the  outer  world,  they 
do  not  exist  in  a  state  of  complete  knowledge.  The  moral 
ideal  is  not  to  multiply  them,  nor  to  make  a  leap  in  the  dark  the 
habitual  method  of  intellectual  procedure.  There  is  no  such 
thing  as  a  categorical  imperative  or  a  religious  credo  for  the 
traveller  under  unknown  skies  ;  he  is  not  to  be  saved  by  faith 
but  by  active  and  constant  self-control,  by  the  spirit  of  doubt 
and  criticism. 

Doubt  is  not,  at  bottom,  as  profoundly  opposed  as  might  be 
believed  to  what  is  best  in  the  religious  sentiment,  it  is  even  a 
D  ubtandthe     P^oduct  of  the  religious  sentiment.     For  doubt  is 
religious  senti-       simply   a   consciousness    that    one's    thought    is 
^^^^'  not   absolute — cannot   seize    the    absolute   either 

directly  or  indirectly  ;  and  so,  consequently,  doubt  is  the  most 
religious  attitude  of  the  human  mind.  Even  atheism  is  often 
less  irreligious  than  a  positive  belief  in  the  imperfect  and  in- 
consistent God  of  religion.  To  be  in  doubt  about  God  is  a 
form  of  the  sense  of  the  divine.  Moreover,  the  constant  inquiry 
that  doubt  provokes  does  not  necessarily  exclude  the  erection 
of  an  altar  to  the  unknown  God,  but  it  excludes  everything 
in  the  nature  of  a  determinate  religion,  the  erection  of  an  altar 
that  bears  a  name,  the  establishment  of  a  cult  that  consists  in 
rites.  In  the  cemeteries  in  Tyrol,  a  little  marble  basin  rests 
on  each  tomb  ;  it  gathers  water  from  the  rain  and  the  swallows 
from  the  eaves  of  the  neighbouring  church  come  and  drink 
from  it ;  this  clear  water,  that  comes  from  on  high,  is  a 
thousand  times  more  sacred,  more  deeply  blessed  than  that 
which  sleeps  in  the  holy-water  vessel  in  the  church,  and  over 
which  the  priest  has  stretched  his  hands.  Why  should 
religion,  so  to  speak,  sequestrate,  retire  from  public  cir- 
culation, everything  it  touches  ?  That  alone  is  truly  sacred 
which    is    consecrated    to    the  use    of    mankind    as    a    whole. 


382  NOy-KELIGION  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

which  passes  from  hand  to  hand,  which  is  worn  out  in  process 
of  time  in  the  service  of  humanity.  There  has  been  enough 
and  to  spare  of  closed  houses,  closed  temples,  closed  souls — of 
cloistered  and  walled-in  lives,  of  smothered  or  extinguished 
hearts  ;    what  ]s_uan ted  is  an  open   heart    and    life  under    the 

»U#i»  open  sky,  under   the    incessant    benediction   of  the    sun  and 

'         clouds. 

Philosophy  is  often  accused  of  pride  because  it  rejects  faith, 
but  it  was  the  father  of  philosophy,  Socrates,  who  first  said  : 
"  I    know  but   one  thing,  that   I   know  nothing." 
doubV^  ^°  ^^  ^^  precisely  because  the  philosopher  knows  how 

much  he  does  not  know  that  he  is  not  certain 
in  regard  to  all  things,  but  is  reduced  to  remain  in  doubt,  to 
wait  anxiously  and  reverentially  for  the  germination  of  the  seed 

i*-(  fct.  ^^  truth  in  the  distant  future.     To  regard  as  certain  what  one 

'*»  does  not  positively  know  is  to  violate  one's  intellectual  con- 
science. From  the  point  of  view  of  the  individual,  as  from  the 
point  of  view  of  society,  doubt  is  in  certain  cases  a  duty — 
doubt,  or  if  you  prefer,  methodical  ignorance,  humility,  self- 
abnegation  in  matters  intellectual.  Where  philosophy  is 
ignorant  it  is  morally  obliged  to  say  to  others  and  to  itself: 
"  I  do  not  know;  I  doubt,  I  hope,  nothing  more."-- 

The  most  original,  and  one  of  the  most  profoundly  moral 
products  of  the  present  century,  of  the  century  of  science,  is 
precisely   this    sincere    sense    of   doubt,    of   the 
doubT^^°  seriousness  of  every  act  of  faith,  of  its  not  being 

a  matter  to  be  undertaken  lightly,  of  its  being  a 
graver  engagement  than  many  others  that  one  hesitates  to 
assume  ;  to  give  in  one's  faith  to  an  opinion  has  come  to  be 
like  attesting  one's  allegiance  to  it  by  the  mediaeval  signature, 
which  was  written  in  one's  blood  and  bound  one  for  all 
eternity.  At  the  point  of  death  especially,  which  is  the 
very  period  when  religion  says  to  a  man,  "  Abandon  thyself  for 
an  instant,  yield  to  the  force  of  example,  of  custom,  to  the 
natural  disposition  to  affirm  as  certain  what  thou  dost  not 
know,  to  fear  of  damnation,  and  thou  shalt  be  saved  " — at  the 
point  of  death  when  a  blind  act  of  faith  is  a  last  weakness  and 
a  last  cowardice,    doubt    is  assuredly  the    highest    and    most 


RELIGIO  US  INDI VIL  UA  LISM.  383. 

courageous  position  the  human  the  ught  can  assume  :  it  is  a 
fight  to  the  finish  without  surrender  ;  it  is  death  with  all  one's 
wounds  before,  in  the  presence  of  the  problem  still  unsolved, 
but  faced  to  the  end. 

///.  Substitution  of  nietaphysicat   hypotheses  for  dogma. 

Beyond  the  limits  of  science  chere  lies  still  a  field  for 
hypothesis,  and  for  that  other  science  called  metaphysics,  the 
aim  of  which  is  to  estimate  the  comparative 
phyTics."  °^^*^"  value  of  hypotheses ;  to  know,  to  suppose,  to 
reason,  to  inquire,  are  of  the  essence  of  the 
modern  mind ;  we  no  longer  need  dogma.  Religion,  which  in 
the  beginning  was  a  naive  science,  has  ultimately  become  the 
enemy  of  science  ;  in  the  future  it  must  give  way  before  science 
or  must  become  merged  in  some  really  scientific  hypothesis; 
an  hypothesis,  that  is  to  say,  which  acknowledges  itself  to  be 
such,  which  declares  itself  to  be  provisional,  which  measures 
its  utility  by  the  amount  it  explains  ;  and  aspires  to  nothing 
better  than  to  give  place  to  an  hypothesis  that  shall  be  more 
inclusive.  Science  and  research  outweigh  stationary  adoration. 
The  eternal  element  in  religion  is  the  tendency  which  pro- 
duced there  the  need  of  an  explanation,  of  a  theory  that 
shall  bind  mankind  and  the  world  together;  the  indefatigable 
activity  of  mind  which  declines  to  stop  at  the  brute  fact  which 
produced  in  former  times  the  tangle  of  contradictory  myths 
and  legends  now  transmuted  into  the  co-ordinate  and  har- 
monious body  of  science.  What  is  respectable  in  religion 
is  precisely  the  germ  of  the  spirit  of  metaphysics  and  scientific 
investigation,  which  is  to-day  proving  fatal  to  religions. 

Religious  sentiment  properly  so  called  must  not  be  con- 
founded with  the  instinct  for  metaphysics,  the  two  are  utterly 

^.   .     .  distinct.     The  first  is  destined  to  decline  with  the 

Distinction 
between meta-       extension  of  knowledge;  the  other,  under  some 

physical  and  re-     form  or  other,  will  always  continue.     The  instinct 
ligious  sentiment,    ^        r  • 

for  free  speculation  corresponds  in  the  first  place 
to  an  indestructible  sense  of  the  limits  of  positive  knowledge: 
it  is  an  echo  in  us  of  the  undying  mystery  of  things.     It  cor- 


384  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

responds  to  an  invincible  tendency  in  the  human  mind  to  the 

need  for  an  ideal ;  to  the  need,  not  only  of  the  intelligence  but 

of  the  heart,  to  pass  beyond  the   limits   of  the  visible  and 

tangible  world.     The  wings  of  the  soul  are  too  long  to  fly  close 

to  the  earth,  the  soul  is  formed  to  move  in  long  swoops  and 

circles  in  the  open  sky.     All  it  needs  is  to  be  lifted  above  the 

earth  ;  often  it  is  unable  to  do  this  of  itself,  and  its  long  wings 

beat  and  trail  in  the  dust.     And  to  what  power  is  it  to  look  for 

its  preliminary  start  ?     To  its  very  desire  for  unknown  spaces,  to 

its  desire  for  an  infinite  and  insecure  ideal.     Nature,  as  positive 

science  reveals  it  to  us,   is,  no  doubt,    the   sole  incontestable 

divinity,  the  deus  ccrtus,  as  the  Emperor  Aurelius  called  the 

Sun  ;  but  its  very  certitude  constitutes  an  element  of  inferiority. 

Sun-light  is  not  the  most  brilliant  light ;  the  reality  can  have 

no  lasting  pretensions  to  be  regarded  as  divine.     The   ideal 

God  is  necessarily  the  dcus  incertiis,  a  problematical,  perhaps 

even  fictitious  God. 

This  sense  at  once  of  the  limits  of  science  and  of  the  infinity 

of  human  aspirations  makes  it  forever  inadmissible  for  man  toi 

Tj     .  .         „     abandon  all  effort  to  solve  the  great  problem  of' 
Persistence  of  ts  f 

metaphysical  the  origin  and  destiny  of  the  universe.  The 
pro  ems.  child,  Spencer  says,  may  hide  his  head  under  the 

bed-clothes,  and  for  an  instant  escape  consciousness  of  the 
darkness  outside  ;  but  in  the  long  run  the  consciousness  sub- 
sists, the  imagination  continues  to  dwell  upon  what  lies  beyond 
the  limits  of  human  conception.  The  progress  of  human 
thought  has  consisted  less  in  discovering  answers  to  ultimate 
problems  than  in  discovering  more  precise  methods  of 
formulating  the  problems  themselves ;  the  enigmas  are  no 
longer  stated  in  primitive  terms.  This  change  in  statement  is 
a  proof  of  the  progress  and  growth  in  the  human  mind ;  but 
the  problems  unhappily  are  as  difficult  as  ever  to  solve.  Up  to 
the  present  moment  no  sufficient  answer  has  been  suggested, 
the  mystery  has  simply  been  transposed  from  one  place  to 
another  ;  so  much  so  that  Spencer  says  the  scientific  inter- 
pretation of  the  universe  is  as  full  of  mysteries  as  theology; 
and  he  compares  human  knowledge  to  a  luminous  globe  in  the 
midst  of  infinite  darkness.     The  larger  the  globe  becomes  the 


RELIGIOUS  INDIVIDUALISM.  3^5 

greater  the  depth  and  extent  of  darkness  that  it  reveals,  inso- 
much that  increase  of  science  but  enlarges  the  abyss  of  our 
ignorance. 

One  must,  however,  be  on  one's  guard  against  exaggeration. 

The    universe    is    infinite,    no    doubt,    and    consequently    the 

„    .,,  o  .        material  of  human  science  is  infinite,  but  the  uni- 

PossiDie  finite-  .  u  r 

nessoftheun-        vcrse     is    dominated    by    a    certain     number    ot 

^'^°^°'  simple  laws  with  which  we  may  become  continu- 

ously better  and  better  acquainted.  Many  generations  of  men 
would  be  necessary  to  master  in  all  their  complexity  the  vedic 
epics,  but  we  are  able  even  to-day  to  formulate  the  principles 
which  dominate  them,  and  it  is  not  impossible  that  we  may 
some  day  be  able  to  do  the  same  for  the  epic  of  the  universe. 
We  may  be  able  even  to  go  the  length  of  achieving  precision 
in  our  ignorance,  of  marking  in  the  infinite  chain  of  phe- 
nomena the  links  which  must  forever  be  hidden  from  us.  It 
is  not  accurate,  therefore,  to  say  that  our  ignorance  increases 
with  our  knowledge,  although  it  may  be  considered  as  prob- 
able that  our  knowledge  will  always  be  aware  of  something 
that  escapes  it,  and  may  come  in  time  to  be  able  more  and 
more  distinctly  to  define,  however  negatively,  the  nature  of 
this  residuum.  The  infinity  of  the  unknowable,  even,  is  no 
more  than  hypothetical.  We  perhaps  flatter  ourselves  in  the 
belief  that  we  possess  anything  that  is  infinite — even  igno- 
ranee.  Perhaps  the  sphere  of  our  knowledge  is  like  the 
terrestrial  globe,  enveloped  by  but  a  thin  atmosphere  of  the 
unknowable  and  unknown ;  perhaps  there  is  no  basis  and 
foundation  of  the  universe,  just  as  there  is  no  basis  and  foun- 
dation of  the  earth  ;  perhaps  the  ultimate  secret  of  things  is 
the  gravitation  of  phenomena.  The  unknown  is  the  air  we 
breathe,  but  it  is  perhaps  no  more  infinite  than  the  earth's 
atmosphere,  and  one's  consciousness  of  an  unknowable  infinity 
can  no  more  be  regarded  as  the  basis  of  knowledge  than  the 
atmosphere  of  the  earth  can  be  regarded  as  the  foundation 
upon  which  the  earth  rests.' 

'  The  notion  of  the  unknowable  has  been  the  subject  of  a  lively  discussion  in 
England  and  in  Fiance.  See  on  this  point  the  work  of  M.  Paulhan  in  the  Revue 
philosophiqtte,  t.  vi.  p.  279. 


386  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

Unknowable  or  not,  infinite  or  finite,  the  unknown  will 
always  be  the  object  of  metaphysical  hypotheses.  But  is  to 
Distinction  be-  ^^^'^^  ^he  perpetuity  of  metaphysical  hypotheses 
tween religion  to  admit  the  eternity  of  religion?  The  question 
an  me  ap  ysics.  jj-j^Qiygs  an  ambiguity  of  words.  Spencer  defines 
religious  thought  as  that  which  deals  with  all  that  lies  beyond 
the  sphere  of  the  senses,  but  that  is  precisely  the  field  of 
philosophic  thought;  philosophy  in  its  entirety,  therefore, 
and  not  religion  only,  is  included  in  Spencer's  definition.  Nay 
more,  science  itself  is  in  part  included  in  Spencer's  definition, 
for  science,  which  takes  cognizance  of  everything  within  the 
reach  of  perception  and  reasoning,  by  that  very  fact  under- 
takes to  fix  the  limit  of  their  power,  and  thus  indirectly 
touches  upon  the  field  of  the  unknowable — if  not  to  enter  it,  at 
l^ast  to  outline  it,  and  that  itself  constitutes  a  sort  of  negative 
acquaintance  with  it.  Knowledge  is  essentially  critical  and 
self-critical.  The  eternity  of  philosophy  and  of  science  must, 
no  doubt,  be  admitted;  but  the  eternity  of  religion,  as  that  word 
is  usually  understood,  in  nowise  follows  from  that  admission. 

According  to  Spencer,  the  unknowable  itself   is  not  abso- 
lutely   unknowable.     Among    the    mysteries,    which    become 

more  mysterious  as  they  are  more  deeply  reflected 
kn^waWe'^  ^'^'       upon,  there  will  remain,  Spencer  thinks,  for  man 

one  absolute  certitude — that  he  is  in  the  presence 
of  an  infinite  and  eternal  energy  which  is  the  source  of  all 
things.  The  formula  of  human  certitude  is  open  to  discussion. 
The  man  of  science  is  more  inclined  to  believe  in  an  infinite 
number  of  energies  than  in  an  infinite  energy,  in  a  sort  of 
mechanical  atomism,  a  subdivision  of  force  ad  infinitum  rather 
than  in  monism.  Moreover,  no  religion  can  stop  with  the  bare 
affirmation  of  the  existence  of  an  eternal  energy  or  infinity  of 
energies.  It  must  maintain  the  existence  of  some  relation 
between  these  energies  and  human  morality,  between  the 
direction  of  these  energies  and  that  of  the  moral  impulse  in 
mankind.  But  a  relation  of  this  sort  is  the  last  thing  in  the 
world  that  can  be  deduced  from  the  doctrine  of  evolution. 
Hypotheses  in  regard  to  the  matter  may  of  course  be  devised, 
but,    far    from     possessing    a    character   of    certitude,    such 


RELIGIOUS  INDIVIDUALISM.  1^1 

hypotheses  would  rather,  from  the  point  of  view  of  pure 
science,  display  a  positive  improbability.  Human  morality,  if 
it  be  considered  scientifically,  is  a  question  that  concerns  the 
struggle  for  existence  and  not  a  question  that  concerns  the 
universe.  What  distinguishes  the  natural  forces,  with  which 
science  deals,  from  gods,  is  precisely  that  the  former  are 
indifferent  to  the  morality  or  immorality  of  our  lives.  In 
spite  of  our  increasing  admiration  for  the  complexity  of  the 
phenomena  of  the  world,  for  the  solidarity  that  obtains 
among  them,  for  the  latent  or  active  life  which  animates  all 
things,  we  have  not  yet  demonstrably  discovered  in  the  world 
a  single  element  of  divinity.  Science  does  not  reveal  to  us  a 
universe  spontaneously  labouring  for  the  realization  of  what 
we  call  goodness  :  goodness  is  to  be  realized,  if  at  all,  only  by 
our  bending  the  world  to  our  purposes,  by  enslaving  the  gods 
that  we  once  adored,  by  replacing  the  reign  of  God  by  the 
reign  of  man. 

The  alleged  reconciliation  of  science  and  religion  in  Spen- 
cer's pages  is  not  made  out  except  by  virtue  of  an  ambiguity 
in  terms.  Partisans  of  religion  have,  however, 
lowers'irFranoe  liastened  to  welcome  these  apparent  concessions 
in  their  favour  and  have  based  on  them  an  argu- 
ment for  the  perpetuity  of  dogmas.  Jouffroy  has  told  us  how 
dogmas  become  extinct ;  recently  one  of  his  successors  at  the 
Sorbonne  endeavoured  to  show  "  how  dogmas  come  into  being 
again,"  and  he  took  his  stand  with  Spencer  on  an  ambiguity  in 
terms.  By  dogmas  j\I.  Caro  meant  the  principal  points  of  the 
original  doctrine  of  the  soul — as  if  one  could  apply  the  name 
dogma  to  philosophical  hypotheses,  even  though  they  be 
eternal  hypotheses !  The  important  thing,  however,  is  to 
understand  each  other;  if  problems  which  constantly  recur, 
and  constantly  receive  hypothetical  solutions,  are  to  be  called 
dogmas,  then  dogmas  do  come  to  life  again,  and  may  be  ex- 
pected always  to  do  so  ;  innlta  renascentur  qu(B  jam  cecidere, 
cadeiiique.  .  .  But  if  terms  be  employed  as  a  philosopher 
should  employ  them,  with  precision,  how  can  metaphysical  con- 
clusions be  regarded  as  dogmas?  Examine  the  writings  of 
Heraclitus,  the  evolutionist;  Plato,  the  contemplator  of  ideas; 


388  NON-RELIGION-  OF   THE   FUTURE. 

Aristotle,  the  formulater  of  the  hivvs  of  thought ;  Descartes,  the 
inquirer  who   sought   in  an   abyss  of   doubt   for   the  absolute 
criterion    of    truth ;    Leibnitz,  who    regarded    himself  as   the 
mirror  of  the  universe;  Spinoza,  lost  in  the  heart  of  infinite 
substance ;   Kant,  resolving    the    universe    into    thought    and 
thought  into  the  moral  law;  where  are  the  dogmas  in  these 
great  metaphysical  poems?     They  are  not  systems  of  dogma, 
they   are    systems    marked    by    the    individuality    of    genius, 
although  containing  something  of  the  eternal  philosophy,  the. 
perennis  philosophia  of  Leibnitz.      Every  system,  as  such,  is/ 
precisely  the  means  of  demonstrating  the  insufificiency  of  the' 
central  idea  which  dominates  it,  and  the  necessity  for  the  humane 
mind  of  passing  beyond  it.     To  systematize  is  to  develop  a 
group  of  ideas  to  their  logical  conclusion,  and,  by  that  very  fact, 
to  show  how  much  they  do  not  include,  how  far  they  fall  short 
of  exhausting  human  thought  as  a  whole  ;  to  construct  is  to 
demonstrate  the  weight  of  the  material  one  is  building  with, 
and  the  impossibility  of  piling  it  up  to  heaven.     Every  system 
requires  a  certain  number  of  years  to  bring  it  to  completion, 
and  then,  when  the  edifice  is  achieved,  one  may  one's  self  mark 
the  points  where  it  will  begin  to  crack,  what  columns  will  yield 
first,  where  its  ultimate  decay  will  begin.     To  recognize  that 
the    subsidence    and    decay  of    a    thing    is    rational,  is  to  be 
resierned  to  it  and  in  some  measure  consoled  for  it;  but  what- 
ever  is  useful  is  necessarily  transitory,  for  it  is  useful  for  an 
end ;  and  it  is  thus  that  the  utility  of  a  system  implies  that  it 
will  some  day  make  way  for  something  else.     "'Avay/cr;  o-r^vai," 
says  dogma  ;  "  dvayKi;  /a^  o-T^mi,"  the  philosopher  says.     Systems 
die  and  dogmas  die ;   sentiments  and    ideas   survive.     What- 
ever has   been    set    in   order   falls    into    disorder,    boundaries 
become  obliterated,  structures  fall  into  dust ;  what  is  eternal 
is  the  dust  itself,  the  dust  of  doctrine,  which  is  always  ready 
to  take  on  a  new  form,  to  fill  a  new  mould,  and   which,  far 
from  receiving  its  life  from  the  fugitive  forms  it  fills,  lends  them 
theirs.     Human  thoughts  live,  not  by  their  contours  but  from 
within.     To  understand  them  they  must  be  taken,  not  as  they 
appear  in  any  one  system,  but  as  they  appear  in  a  succession 
of  different  and  often  diverse  systems. 


RELIGIOUS  INDIVIDUALISM.  389 

As  speculation  and  hypothesis  are  eternal,  so  also  is  the 
instinct  for  philosophy  and  metaphysics  which  corresponds  to 
them  eternal,  though  it  is  perpetually  changing. 
meuphysic?°^  ^^  appears  at  the  present  day  as  something 
widely  different  from  the  intimate  certitude  of 
dogma,  of  confident  and  placid  faith.  If  independence  of 
mind  and  freedom  of  speculation  are  not  without  their  sweet- 
ness, their  attractiveness,  their  intoxication,  they  are  not  with- 
out their  bitterness  and  disquietude.  We  must  make  up  our 
minds  to-day  to  accept  a  certain  modicum  of  intellectual  suffer- 
ing as  inseparable  from  our  treasure  of  intellectual  joy ;  for  the 
life  of  the  spirit,  like  that  of  the  body,  follows  a  just  mean 
between  pleasure  and  pain.  Intense  metaphysical  emotion, 
like  intense  jesthetic  emotion,  possesses  always  an  element  of 
sadness."  The  day  will  come  when  the  graver  moods  of  the 
human  heart  will  sometimes  demand  satisfaction  as  they 
demanded  and  found  satisfaction  in  Heraclitus  and  Jeremiah. 
It  is  inevitable  that  there  should  be  an  element  of  melancholy 
in  the  emotional  setting  of  metaphysical  speculation — as 
there  inevitably  is  in  the  perception  of  the  sublimity  we  feel 
ourselves  incapable  of  attaining,  in  the  experience  of  doubt, 
of  intellectual  evil,  of  moral  evil,  of  sensible  evil  which  are 
mingled  with  all  our  joys,  and  of  which  doubt  itself  is  but 
a  reverberation  in  consciousness.  There  is  an  element  of 
suffering  in  all  profound  philosophy  as  in  all  profound  religion. 

One  day  when  I  was  seated  at  my  desk  my  wife  came  up  to 

me  and   exclaimed :  "  How  melancholy  you  look !     What  is 

the  matter  with  you  ?     Tears,   mo7i  Dicii  !     Is  it 

Communion        anything  that  I  have   done?"     "  Of  course  it  is    ^ 

•with  tne  universe.         ■'  °  ^ 

not ;  it  is  never  anything  that  you  have  done.  I 
was  weeping  over  a  bit  of  abstract  thought,  of  speculation  on 
the  world  and  the  destiny  of  things.  Is  there  not  enough 
misery  in  the  world  to  justify  an  aimless  tear?  and  of  joy  to 
justify  an  aimless  smile?"  The  great  totality  of  things  in 
which  man  lives  may  well  demand  a  smile  or  a  tear  from 
him,  and  it  is  his  conscious  solidarity  with  the  universe,  the 
impersonal  joy  and  pain  that  he  is  capable  of  experiencing,  the 

'  See  our  Problemes  de  I'esthetique  contemporaine,  ist  part. 


390  NON-RELIGION  OF   THE  FUTURE. 

faculty,  so  to  speak,  of  impersonalizing  himself,  that  is  the 
most  durable  element  in  religion  and  philosophy.  To  sym- 
pathize with  the  whole  universe,  to  inquire  the  secret  of  it, 
to  wish  to  contribute  to  its  amelioration,  to  overpass  the  limits 
of  our  egoism  and  live  the  life  of  the  universe,  is  the  dis- 
tinguishing pursuit  of  humanity. 

Religion,  therefore,  may  pass  away  without  in  the  least 
affecting  the  metaphysical  instinct,  or  the  emotion  which 
accompanies  its  exercise.  When  the  Hebrew^ 
Summary.  ^^^^^.^  marching  toward  the  promised  land  they 
felt  that  God  was  with  them,  God  had  spoken  and  had  told 
them  what  lay  beyond,  and  at  night  a  pillar  of  fire  lighted 
them  on  their  way.  The  pillar  of  fire  has  burned  out,  and  we 
are  no  longer  sure  that  God  is  with  us  ;  we  possess  no  other 
fire  to  light  us  on  our  way  through  infinite  night  but  that  of 
our  intelligence.  If  we  could  but  be  sure  that  there  is  a  prom- 
ised land— that  others  may  attain  it  as  well  as  Ave — that  the 
desert  really  has  an  end  !  But  we  are  not  certain  even  of  that ; 
we  are  seeking  for  a  new  world  and  are  not  positive  that  it 
exists  ;  nobody  has  journeyed  thither,  nobody  has  returned 
thence,  and  our  sole  hope  of  repose  lies  in  discovering  it.  And 
we  shall  go  forward  forever,  the  puppets  of  an  indefatigable 
hope. 


CHAPTER  II. 

ASSOCIATION.     THE   PERMANENT   ELEMENT   OF   RELIGIONS   IN 

SOCIAL   LIFE. 

Social  Aspect  of    Religions— Religious  Communities    and    Churches — 
Ideal  Type  of  Voluntary  Association — Its  Diverse  Forms. 

I.  Associations  for  intellectual  purposes— How  such  associations 
might  preserve  the  most  precious  elements  of  religions— Soci- 
eties for  the  advancement  of  science,  philosophy,  religion — 
Dangers  to  avoid— Popularization  of  scientific  ideas  ;  propagan- 
dism  in  the  interests  of  science. 

II.  Associations  for  moral  purposes— Tendency  of  religion  in  the 
best  minds  to  become  one  with  charity — Pity  and  charity  will 
survive  dogma— Role  of  enthusiasm  in  moral  propagandism — 
Necessity  of  hope  to  sustain  enthusiasm— Possibility  of  propagat- 
ing moral  ideas:  i.  Apart  from  myths  and  religious  dogmas; 
2.  Apart  from  any  notion  of  a  religious  sanction— Baudelaire's 
conception  of  a  criminal  and  happy  hero— Criticism  of  that  con- 
ception— Worship  of  the  memory  of  the  dead. 

III.  Associations  for  aesthetic  purposes— Worship  of  art  and 
nature— Art  and  poetry  will  sever  their  connection  with  religion 
and  will  survive  it — Necessity  of  developing  the  sesthetic  senti- 
ment and  the  worship  of  art,  as  the  religious  sentiment  becomes 
more  feeble— Poetr}-,  eloquence,  music  ;  their  role  in  the  future — 
Final  substitution  of  art  for  rites— Worship  of  nature— Feeling 
for  nature  originally  an  essential  element  of  the  religious  senti- 
ment— Superiority  of  a  worship  of  nature  over  worship  of  human 
art— Nature  is  the  true  temple  of  the  future. 

The  most  durable  practical  idea  in  possession  of  the  religious 

spirit,  as  of  the  spirit  of  reform,  is  that  of  association.     In  the 

beginning,  as  we   have   seen,  religion  was  essen- 

Association         ^.j^jj     sociological,  by  its  conception  of  a  society 

and  religion.  -'  °  ,_,  ,  , 

of  gods  and  men.  The  element  of  various 
religions  that  will  survive  in  the  non-religion  of  the  future  is 
precisely  this  conception,  that  the  ideal  of  humanity  and  even 

391 


392  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

of  nature  consists  in  the  establishment  of  closer  and  closer 
social  relations  between  all  kinds  of  beings.  Religions,  there- 
fore, have  justly  chosen  to  call  themselves  associations  and 
^glises,  that  is  to  say,  assemblies.  It  is  by  force  of  assemblies, 
secret  or  open,  that  the  great  Jewish  and  Christian  religions 
have  conquered  the  world.  Christianity  has  even  resulted  in  the 
notion  of  an  universal  church,  first  militant,  then  triumphant, 
and  united  in  love  ;  although,  by  a  strange  aberration,  instead 
of  regarding  universality  as  an  ideal,  as  the  inaccessible  limit 
of  an  indefinite  evolution,  Catholicity  has  been  presented  as 
already  realized  in  a  system  of  dogmas  which  there  was  noth- 
ing to  do  but  to  disseminate,  and  that,  if  need  be,  by  force. 
This  mistake  has  been  the  ruin  of  dogmatic  religions,  and  it 
still  subsists,  even  in  religions  which  have  transmuted  their 
dogmas  into  symbols  ;  for  an  universal  symbol  is  less  conceiv- 
able than  an  universal  dogma.  The  only  universal  thing  is  and 
should  be  precisely  the  liberty  accorded  to  individuals  of  con- 
ceiving the  eternal  enigma  in  any  manner  whatever  that 
appeals  to  them,  and  of  associating  themselves  with  those  who^ 
share  the  same  hypothesis. 

The  right  of  association,  which  has  hitherto  been  checked 
by  law,   by  ignorance,  by   prejudice,  by   difficulties   of    com- 
munication, etc.,  had  scarcely  begun  to  manifest 
Ideal  type  of      j^.^  £^jj  importance  till  in  the    present   century. 

association,  ^  _  _     ^  ^ 

Associations  of  every  kind  will  some  day  cover 
the  globe,  or  rather  everything,  so  to  speak,  will  be  accom- 
plished by  associate  enterprise  ;  and  within  the  limits  of  the 
great  body  of  society  innumerable  groups  of  the  most  div^erse 
kinds  will  form  and  dissolve  with  an  equal  facility,  without 
impeding  the  general  movement.  The  ideal  type  of  every 
form  of  association  is  a  compound  of  the  ideal  of  social- 
ism and  of  the  ideal  of  individualism — such  a  form  of  associ- 
r  ation,  that  is  to  say,  as  will  afford  the  individual  at  once 
the  maximum  of  present  and  future  security,  and  the  maxi- 
mum of  personal  liberty.  Every  insurance  company  is  an 
association  of  this  kind  ;  the  individual  member  is  protected 
by  the  immense  power  of  the  association  ;  his  contribution  to 
the  associate  funds  is  of  the  slightest,  he  is  free   to  join  the 


ELEMENT  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  SOCIAL   LIFE.  393 

association  or  to  withdraw  from  it,  and  to  lead  his  life  abso- 
lutely as  he  chooses. 

The  mistake  of  religions,  and  of  systems  of  socialism  also,  as 
we  have  already  remarked,  is   that  they   presuppose  a  society 

of  individuals  morally  and   intellectually  of   the 
formr"^"''^         same  type.    But  human  beings  are,  neither  within] 

nor  without,  copies  of  each  other  ;    the  compara- 
tive psychology  and  physiology  of  races  and  nations,  sciences 
which    are    still    embryonic,    will    one    day   demonstrate   the 
diversity  which  exists  between  different  divisions  of  the  human 
species  and,  owing  to  atavisms  of  various  kinds,  even  between 
individuals  of  the  most  strictly  homogeneous    divisions    and 
groups.       Religious,  metaphysical,  and    moral   sentiment  will 
one  day  appear  in  very  various  forms,  and  give  rise  to  asso- 
ciations of  every  kind — some  individualistic,  some  socialistic — 
so  that  men  of  the  same  stamp  may  mutually  aid  and  encourage 
each  other,  under  condition,  however,  of  preserving  their  com-    ^ 
plete  independence,  their  perfect  right  to  change  their  beliefs 
when  they  will.     Union  and  independence  should  go  hand  in-^ 
hand  ;    everything   should  be  shared,  but   nobody  should   be 
compelled  to  give  or  to  receive ;  minds  may  be  made  trans- 
parent without  losing  their  freedom  of  movement.     The  future, 
in  a  word,   belongs  to  association,  providing  it  be  voluntary 
association,  for  the  augmentation,  and  not  for  the  sacrifice  of 
personal  liberty. 

If  we  pass  from  these  general  principles  to  their  particular 
applications  we  find  three  essential  kinds  of  voluntary  associa- 
tion that  seem  destined  to  survive  religions:  associations  for  in- 
tellectual purposes,  for  moral  purposes,  for  emotional  purposes. 

/.  Associations  for   intellectual  purposes. 

It  will  always  be  possible  for  men  of  science  to  associate  for 
the  purpose  of  verifying  and  collecting  evidence  in  regard  to 
.    .      ,     doctrines  and  beliefs  which  they  themselves  recog- 
the  advancement    nize  as  provisional  only.     There  are  divisions  and 
ofresearch.  subdivisions    in    the    world    of    thought,    which 

resemble  the  geographical  division  of  the  earth  ;  these  divisions 
practically  result  from  the  division  of  labour ;    each  person  has 


394  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

a  distinct  task  to  fulfil,  a  distinct  object  to  which  he  must 
apply  his  intelligence.  The  whole  body  of  labourers  united  in 
one  and  the  same  effort  of  thought,  and  turned  toward  the 
same  point  in  the  intellectual  horizon,  tend  naturally  to 
gravitate  toward  each  other  ;  every  form  of  co-operation  tends 
to  become  an  association.  We  all  of  us  belong  to  some  intel- 
lectual province,  we  have  all  of  us  a  mental  native  land,  in 
which  we  find  our  fellow-citizens,  our  brothers  toward  whom 
we  are  impelled  by  a  natural  sympathy.  This  sympathy  is 
explicable  as  a  vague  consciousness  of  the  solidarity  existing 
between  the  whole  body  of  intelligent  human  beings  who 
inevitably  take  an  interest  in  each  other,  who  love  to  share  truth 
or  error,  as  they  love  to  share  pleasure  or  pain  :  it  is  good  to  see 
men  draw  together  and  agree,  providing  they  do  not  thereby 
lose  flexibility;  providing  their  solidarity  becomes  a  condition 
of  progress  and  not  of  immobility.  Men  will  always  delight  in 
contributing  their  store  of  ideas  to  the  common  stock,  as  the 
disciples  of  Socrates  brought  their  dinners  and  shared  them  in 
the  little  house  in  Athens ;  knowledge,  supposition,  or  prejudice, 
in  common,  draws  people  together  like  a  common  love.  Our 
hearts  should  go  out  first  to  those  who  are  nearest  to  us,  to  those 
who  are  our  neighbours  in  the  field  of  intelligence.  Labour 
not  only  fashions  the  object  it  is  expended  on,  it  fashions  the 
labourer ;  similarity  of  occupation  pursued  with  the  same 
ardour  ends  by  producing  similarity  of  heart.  Companionship 
in  labour,  of  whatsoever  kind  it  may  be,  constitutes  one  of  the 
/strongest  ties  among  men.  In  our  days  associations  are  formed 
among  men  of  science  or  investigators,  as  among  journeymen 
following  the  same  trade.  There  are  societies  for  the  pursuit 
of  scientific,  medical,  biological  studies,  etc.  ;  and  societies  for 
the  pursuit  of  literary  and  philological  studies,  of  philosophical, 
psychological,  and  moral  studies;  of  economic  and  social 
studies,  and  finally  of  religious  studies.  These  societies  are 
genuine  dglises,  churches,  but  churches  for  community  of  labour 
and  not  for  associate  repose  in  a  conventional  faith  ;  and  they 
will  increase  in  number  with  the  subdivision  and  specialization 
of  each  of  these  several  branches  of  study.  Such  associations 
are  typical  of  future  associations  generally,  religious  associations 


ELEMENT  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  SOCIAL   LIFE.  395 

included.  Community  of  inquiry,  which  no  less  than  com- 
munity of  faith  gives  rise  to  a  feeling  of  fraternity,  is  often 
superior  to  community  of  faith  and  more  fertile  than  it.  The 
hit'-hest  relieious  associations  will,  no  doubt,  some  day  be  asso- 
ciations  for  the  pursuit  of  religious  and  metaphysical  studies. 
Thus  the  best  elements  of  individualism  and  socialism  will  be 
reconciled.  The  infinite  extensibility  of  science,  the  oppor- 
tunity that  it  offers  inquirers  of  appropriating  the  results  of 
each  other's  labours,  make  association  for  the  acquisition  of 
knowledge  the  type  of  a  perfect  association,  of  an  association 
that  exists  for  the  benefit  both  of  the  individuals  and  of  the 
society. 

There  is  one  thing,  however  to  be  avoided.     Opinions,  and 

in  especial  opinions  on  morals,  social  matters,  or  metaphysical 

subjects,  acquire,  like  the  sticks  in  the  fable,  a  prodigious  power, 

when  a  number  of  people  holding  them  in  com- 

Scientific  ^^^  Qj^^g  associate,  which  is  out  of  all  relation  to 

fanaticism. 

the    intrinsic  value   of    the    opinions  themselves. 

Novalis  said :  "  My  faith  gained  an  infinite  value  in  my  eyes 
the  moment  I  saw  it  shared  by  someone  else."  The  psy- 
chology of  that  remark  is  just ;  it  calls  attention  to  a  dangerous 
illusion  against  which  precaution  should  be  taken  ;  for  in  a 
certain  state  of  the  emotions  it  is  easier  for  two  people,  and 
even  for  a  thousand,  to  make  mistakes  than  for  any  one  of 
them  separately.  Science  has  its  enthusiasts,  and  also  its 
fanatics,  and  might  have  at  need  its  advocates  of  intolerance 
and  violence.  Happily  it  carries  the  remedy  for  all  this  with 
it  ;  increase  science,  and  it  becomes  the  very  principle  of  toler- 
ance, for  the  greatest  science  is  best  aware  of  its  own  limits. 

While  distinguished  minds  will  thus  associate  and  carry  on 

their    labours   and    speculations    in    common,    men    who   are 

.    ,     .       occupied  rather  with  manual  labour  will  associate 

A^^npifl-tion  for 

purposes  of  propa-  for  the  communication  of  their  more  or  less  vague, 
gandism,  mox&  OX  Icss  irreflcctive  beliefs,  which,  however, 

will  be  increasingly  free  from  all  element  of  the  supernatural 
as  instruction  spreads  among  the  people.  These  beliefs, 
which  among  certain  peoples  will  be  metaphysical,  among 
certain   others,  such  as  the  Latin  nations,  will  be   social  and 


396  NON-RELIGION  OF   THE   FUTURE. 

moral.  Such  associations  will  be  of  every  possible  kind,  accord- 
ing to  the  opinions  which  preside  over  their  formation  ;  they 
will,  however,  possess  this  trait  in  common,  that  they  will  more 
and  more  rigorously  exclude  anything  in  the  nature  of  dogma 
and  of  revelation.  They  will  aim  also  at  becoming  like  the 
associations  of  thinkers  and  men  of  science  of  which  we  have 
just  spoken.  It  will  be  the  duty  of  people  of  education,  in 
such  societies,  to  hand  on  the  results  of  the  scientific  and 
metaphysical  inquiries  conducted  by  associations  higher  in  the 
intellectual  scale.  Every  temple  will  thus  be  built  in  stages^ 
nave  on  nave,  as  in  certain  ancient  churches,  and  the  highest 
of  these  temples  from  which  the  inspired  word  will  descend 
will  be  open  to  the  sky  and  inhabited  not  by  believers  but  by 
unbelievers  in  every  limitation  of  research — by  minds  restlessly 
active,  in  quest  of  a  more  extended  and  demonstrable  knowl- 
edge :  ad  lucem  per  lucent. 

One  of  the  principal  effects  of  association  for  intellectual  pur- 
poses, thus  conducted,  would  be  the  diffusion  of  scientific  ideas 
among  the  people.     If  religions  may  be  considered 
the  dissemination    ^s   SO    many   expressions    of    the  earliest    scien- 
of useful  knowi-     ^-jfj^,  theories,  the  surest  means  of  combating  the 

edge.  .  . 

errors  and  of  preserving  the  good  sides  of  religion 
would  be  the  dissemination  of  the  established  principles  of 
modern  science.  To  disseminate  is  in  a  sense  "  to  convert," 
but  to  convert  the  believer  to  a  faith  in  indubitable  virtues;  the 
task  is  one  which  is  most  tempting  to  a  philosopher  ;  one  is 
sure  that  truth  can  do  no  harm,  when  it  is  handed  on  in  all  its 
purity.  A  really  capital  bit  of  statement,  a  really  capital  book, 
is  often  better  than  a  good  action  ;  it  carries  farther,  and  if  an 
imprudent  act  of  heroism  sometimes  has  a  melancholy  ending, 
words  that  speak  to  the  heart  never  have.  There  are  already 
in  existence  books  for  children,  and  for  the  people,  that  are 
masterpieces ;  they  supply  the  public,  for  which  they  are 
intended,  with  ideas  on  morality  and  on  certain  sciences  and 
supply  those  ideas  undisfigured  ;  and  such  books  constitute 
more  or  less  scientific  catechisms,  which  are  altogether  superior 
to  religious  catechisms.  At  some  future  day  such  books  will  be 
written  in  regard  to  the  great  cosmological  and  metaphysical 


ELEMENT  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  SOCIAL  LIFE.  397 

theories,  epitomizing  in  simple  language,  made  simpler  by- 
telling  illustrations,  the  body  of  acquired  facts  or  of  probable 
hypotheses  on  the  prime  subjects  of  human  interest.  The  dis- 
semination of  knowledge,  standing  thus  on  the  middle  plane 
between  original  inquiry  and  research  and  popular  ignorance, 
will  take  the  place  held  by  religions,  which  are  themselves 
founded  on  a  collection  of  exoteric  notions — a  gross  and 
symbolic  epitome  of  what  once  was  profound,  and  to-day  is 
naive,  in  the  realm  of  knowledge.  Modern  science,  if  it  is  to 
progress,  must  be  popularized  ;  like  a  great  river,  if  it  is  to  grow 
larger,  its  bed  must  be  deepened  and  widened. 

One  of  the  great  advantages  of  science  is  that  it  can  employ 

half  talent  and  modest  capacity— a  manifest  advantage  for  it 

„  .     .,  as   compared    with    art.     A   mediocre  poet   is  a 

Scientific  re-  ^  i  •  u 

search  open  to       zero  in  the  universe — at  least  sometimes;  but  a 
everybody.  ^^^^  ordinary  mind  may  be  capable  of  rendering 

a  genuine  service  by  some  almost  insignificant  improvement  in 
the  method  of  covering  the  wires  in  an  electric  coil  or  in  the 
o-ear  of  a  steam-engine  ;  it  will  have  done  its  work  in  this  world, 
will  have  paid  its  tribute,  have  won  its  place  in  the  sun.     Art 
cannot  endure  mediocrity,  science  may  rely  upon  ^t— an d^  find 
collaborators  everywhere.     Owing  to  that  fact,  science  is  capa- 
ble of  a  degree  of  democratization  that  art  does  not  always  pos- 
sess— and  that  religion  alone  has  equalled.     Art  is  capable  of 
being  and    remaining    aristocratic  ;  science    disdains   nothing, 
gathers  together  all  kinds  of  observations,  makes  use  of  all  kinds 
and  grades  of  intellectual  power.     Like  the  great  Buddhistic 
and  Christian  religions,  science  favours  equality,  needs  the  sup- 
port of  the  multitude,  needs  to  be  named  legion.     No  doubt  a 
small  number  of  commanding  men  of  genius  are  always  neces- 
sary to  conduct   the  work,  to  synthesize  the  materials  in  their 
totality,  to  make  the   more   fundamental  inductions.     But   if 
these  men  of  genius  were  isolated,  they  would  be   powerless. 
Every  man  must  contribute  a  stone,  somewhat  at  haphazard, 
and  the  construction  settles  firmly  on  its  foundation  beneath 
the    added  weight   of  all    of  them,  and  becomes  really  inde- 
structible.    Dikes  made  of   irregular  stones  are  the  solidest  of 
all.     When   one  walks  along  such   a  dike,  one  feels  the   sea 


39^  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

rumble  and  break  not  only  near  one  but  under  one's  very  feet ; 
the  water  plays  vainly  against  the  uncemented,  undressed 
blocks  of  stone  without  being  able  to  detach  them,  bathes 
them  all  and  destroys  none;  such,  in  the  history  of  the  human 
mind,  is  science,  which  is  formed  of  a  multitude  of  little  facts, 
gathered  in  very  much  at  haphazard,  which  generations  of 
mankind  have  piled  up  in  disorder,  and  which  ultimately 
become  so  solidly  united  that  no  effort  of  the  imagination  can 
disjoin  them.  The  human  mind,  in  the  midst  of  its  eternal 
ebb  and  flow,  feels  something  solid  and  indestructible  in  its 
possession  that  its  waves  beat  against  in  vain. 

//.  Associations  for  moral  purposes  and  moral  propagandisni. 

There    is   another   element    of    religion    that   will   survive. 

Men  not   only  associate    for  intellectual  purposes,  they  will 

,      .  ,.     .       continue  to  do  so  for  the   purpose   of  minister- 
Association  for  .  . 

uplifting  the  ing    to    human  suffering,    of    correcting    errors, 

™^^^^^'  of  disseminating  moral  ideas.     Such  associations, 

like  those  for  intellectual  purposes,  are  based  on  a  conscious- 
ness of  the  solidarity  and  fraternity  of  mankind,  although, 
pf  course,  so  far  as  the  future  is  concerned,  there  will  be 
no  question  of  a  fraternity  conceived  superstitiously,  or  anti- 
philosophically,  as  arising  out  of  a  community  of  origin, 
from  the  same  terrestrial  or  celestial  father,  but  only  of  a^ 
rational  and  moral  fraternity,  arising  out  of  an  identity  of  nature 
and  interest.  The  true  philosopher  should  say  not  only, 
"  Nothing  that  is  human  is  strange  to  me  ;"  but  also,  "  Nothing 
that  lives,  suffers,  and  thinks  is  strange  to  me."  The  heart 
feels  at  home  wherever  it  finds  another  heart,  though  it  even  be 
in  a  lower  order  of  being,  and  a  fortiori,  if  it  be  in  an  equal  or 
higher  order  of  being.  A  Hindu  poet,  says  the  legend,  saw 
a  wounded  bird  fall  struggling  at  his  feet ;  the  heart  of  the 
poet,  sobbing  with  pity,  struggled  with  the  struggles  of  the 
dying  bird  :  it  is  this  fluttering  of  the  heart,  this  measured 
and  modulated  rhythm  of  pain,  which  was  the  origin  of  verse. 
Like  poetry,  religion  also  originated  in  the  highest  and  most 
beautiful  manifestation  of  pity.  Human  love  for  human 
beings  does  not  demand,  as  a    condition    precedent,    perfect 


ELEMENT  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  SOCIAL   LIFE.  399 

spiritual  accord  ;  it  is  love  itself  that  produces  such  accord  as 
is  necessary.  Love  one  another,  and  you  will  understand  one 
another  ;  light  springs  from  the  true  union  of  hearts. 

Universal    sympathy    is    a    sentiment    which     is    destined 

increasingly  to  develop  in  future  societies.     Even  to-day,  as 

the  result  of  an  inevitable  evolution,  religion  has 

Love  of  man-       come  to  be  confounded  in  the  best  minds  with 

kind  in  the  future. 

charity.  Hard  and  sterile  among  primitive  peo- 
ples, little  more  than  a  collection  of  formulae  of  propitiation, 
religions  have  come,  through  their  alliance  with  morality,  to 
be  one  of  the  essential  sources  of  human  tenderness.  Bud- 
hism  and  Christianity  have  headed,  first  and  last,  the  principal 
charitable  organizations  established  among  mankind.  Fatally 
condemned  as  they  are,  at  the  end  of  a  longer  or  shorter 
period,  to  intellectual  sterility,  these  two  religions  are  endowed 
w'ith  the  genius  of  the  heart.  Men  like  Vincent  de  Paul  have 
little  by  little  come  to  replace  men  like  St.  Augustine  or  St. 
Athanasius,  not  without  profit  to  humanity.  This  evolutionary 
process  will,  no  doubt,  continue  ;  to-day,  for  example,  few  really 
talented  theological  works  are  produced  by  the  priesthood,' 
but  a  great  many  practical  charities  are  excellently  conceived 
and  executed  by  them.  The  day,  no  doubt,  will  come  when 
the  experience  of  personal  suffering  will  always  result  in  a 
'desire  to  relieve  the  suffering  of  others.  Physical  pain  usually 
produces  a  need  of  physical  movement;  aesthetic  instinct 
introduces  rhythm  into  the  movement,  transforms  disorderly 
gestures  into  a  beautiful  regularity,  and  discordant  cries  into 
songs  of  pain  ;' moral  instinct  turns  this  need  of  movement 
toward  the  service  of  other  people,  and  every  misfortune  thus 
becomes  a  source  of  pity  for  the  misfortunes  of  others,  and 
grief  is  transmuted  into  charity. 

As  in  the  case  of  artistic  sentiment,  religious  sentiment  at 

its  best    must  be   productive,  must  stimulate  one's   activity. 

Religion,  according  to  St.  Paul,  means  charity, 

^,.o!;!l  i!,  »!,l"n„  love  ;  but  there  is  no  charity  that  is  not  charity 
pression  m  action.  '  J  -' 

for  someone,  and  a  really  rich  love  cannot  be 
confined  within  the  limits  of  contemplation  and  mystic 
ecstasy,  which,  scientifically  considered,  are  simply  perversions 

'  None  in  France.  -  See  the  author's  Problhnes  d'esthetique,  i.  3. 


400  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

and,  as  it  were,  spiritual  miscarriages.  True  love  must 
act. 

The  ancient  opposition  between  faith  and  works  is  thus 
effaced.  There  is  no  powerful  faith  without  works,  any  more 
than  there  is  any  such  thing  as  a  sterile  genius  or  an  unpro- 
ductive talent  for  art.  If  Jesus  preferred  Mary,  who  was 
motionless  at  his  feet,  to  Martha,  who  was  moving  about 
the  house,  it  was,  no  doubt,  because  he  perceived  in  the 
former  a  treasure  of  moral  energy  in  reserve  for  the  service  of 
some  great  devotion  ;  in  reserve  and  therefore  only  waiting  ; 
silent,  with  a  silence  of  sincere  love  which  speaks  more  fer- 
vently than  words. 

Charity  will  always  constitute  the  point  of  meeting  between 
the  most  audacious  theoretic  speculation  and  the  least  auda- 
cious practical  activity.  To  identify  one's  self, 
^"  ^'  thought  and  heart,  with  someone  else  is  \.q  speculate 
in  the  most  charming  sense  of  the  word,  is  to  stake  one's  all. 
And  the  risk  of  staking  his  all  is  one  that  man  will  always  wish 
to  run.  He  is  pushed  to  it  by  the  most  vivacious  impulses  in 
his  nature,  Goethe  said  that  a  man  is  not  really  worthy  of 
the  name  till  he  has  "  begotten  a  child,  built  a  house,  and 
planted  a  tree."  The  details  chosen  are  somewhat  trivial,  but 
the  aphorism  embodies  the  need  for  productivity  which  is 
inherent  in  every  being,  the  need  to  give  or  to  develop  life, 
to  found  something;  the  being  who  does  not  obey  this  im- 
pulse is  declasse,  is  degraded  below  the  rank  of  man;  he  will 
suffer  from  it  some  day  or  other,  and  die  of  it  body  and  soul. 
Happily  absolute  egoism  is  less  frequent  than  is  believed ;  to 
live  solely  for  one's  self  is  a  sort  of  Utopia  that  may  be 
summed  up  in  the  naive  formula  :  Everybody  for  me  and  I 
for  nobody.  The  humblest  of  us,  the  instant  we  undertake 
a  work  of  charity,  come  into  possession  of  a  completer  self; 
we  belong  at  once  wholly  to  the  enterprise,  to  the  idea  in- 
volved in  it,  to  an  idea  more  or  less  impersonal ;  we  are  drawn 
forward  in  spite  of  ourselves,  like  a  swimmer  by  the  current 
of  the  stream. 

The  promotion  of  every  enterprise  great  and  small  and  of 
almost  every  human  work  depends  on  enthusiasm,  which  has 


ELEMENT  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  SOCIAL  LIFE.  401 

played  so  important  a   role  in  religion.     Enthusiasm  presup- 
poses a  belief  in  the  possible  reality  of  an  ideal,  an  active  belief 
to  be  manifested  in   effort.     There   is    generally 

Enthusiasm!      ,  -     ,  ...  ^     ±.    •  1 

but  one  way  of  demonstratmg  what  is  merely 
possible,  and  that  is  by  realizing  it,  by  converting  it  from  possi- 
bility into  actuality.  Excessively  matter-of-fact  minds — minds 
immersed  in  matter — are  condemned  to  short-sightedness  in 
the  realm  of  the  possible ;  analysts  distinguish  too  exactly  be- 
tween what  is,  and  what  is  not,  to  be  able  to  be  of  the  best 
service  in  the  labour  of  increasingly  transforming  the  one  into 
the  other.  There  is,  no  doubt,  a  point  of  junction  between 
the  present  and  the  future,  but  pure  int^elligence  finds  it  diffi- 
cult to  lay  its  finger  on  it:  it  is  everywhere  and  nowhere,  or 
rather  it  is  not  an  inert  point  but  a  flying  point,  a  direction, 
a  volition  in  pursuit  of  an  end.  The  world  belongs  to  the 
enthusiast,  who  deliberately  deals  with  the  "  not  yet  "  as  the 
"  already,"  and  treats  the  future  as  if  it  were  the  present ;  the 
world  belongs  to  the  synthetic  mind,  which  confounds  the 
real  and  the  ideal  in  its  embrace;  the  world  belongs  to  men  of 
the  voluntary  type,  who  do  violence  to  reality,  and  break  up 
its  rigid  outlines,  and  force  it  to  yield  up  from  within  what 
might  beforehand,  in  pure  reason,  have  with  equal  justice  been 
pronounced  the  possible  and  the  impossible.  The  world  be- 
longs to  the  prophets  and  messiahs  of  science  ;  enthusis^Qj  is 
necessary  to  mankind,  it  is  the  genius  of  the  masses  and  the-"^ 
productive  element  in  the  genius  of  individuals. 

The  essence  of  enthusiasm  is  hope,  and  the  basis  of  hope 
is  manliness,  is  courage.  Courage,  of  despair  is  not  so  intense 
a  phrase  as  courage  of  hope.  Hope  and  true 
ourage.  ^^^  active  charity  are  one.  If  Hope  alone  re- 
mained in  the  bottom  of  Pandora's  box  it  was  not  because  she 
had  lost  her  wings  and  was  unable  to  desert  the  society  of 
men  for  the  open  spaces  of  the  sky  ;  it  was  that  pity,  charity, 
devotion,  are  very  elements  of  her  nature  ;  to  hope  is  to  love, 
and  to  love  is  to  wish  to  minister  to  those  who  suffer.  Upon 
the  half-open  box  of  Pandora,  from  which  Hope  in  her 
devotion  to  mankind  refused  to  make  her  escape,  should  be 
inscribed,  as   upon    the   leaden   coffer   in    the    "  Merchant  of 


402  NOX-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

Venice,"  "  Who  chooseth  me,  must  give  and  hazard  all  he 
hath." 

The  object  of  enthusiasm  varies  from  age  to  age :  it  was 
once  religion,  it  may  be  scientific  doctrine  and  discovery,  it 
may,  above  all,  be  moral  and  social  beliefs.  It 
results  therefrom  that  the  spirit  of  proselytism, 
that  seems  so  peculiar  to  religion,  is  destined  to  survive 
religion  :  it  will  be  transformed  simply.  Every  sincere  and"/' 
enthusiastic  man  with  a  surplus  of  moral  energy  is  at  heart  a« 
missionary,  a  propagandist  of  ideas  and  beliefs.  Next  to  the 
joy  of  possessing  a  truth  or  a  system  which  seems  to  be  true, 
is  that  of  disseminating  this  truth,  of  feeling  it  speak  and  act 
in  us,  of  exhaling  it  with  our  breath.  There  have  been  more 
than  twelve  apostles  in  the  history  of  humanity;  every  heart 
that  is  young,  and  strong,  and  loving  is  the  heart  of  an 
apostle.  There  is  not  an  idea  in  our  brain  that  does  not 
possess  some  element  of  sociality,  of  fraternity;  that  does  not 
struggle  for  expression.  Propagandism  will  be  as  ardently 
pursued,  in  the  society  of  the  future,  as  discovery.  Moral 
proselytism  will  aim  at  communicating  enthusiasm  for  the 
good  and  the  true,  at  uplifting  the  moral  level  of  mankind  as 
a  whole  and  mainly  of  the  masses  of  the  people. 

But  here  we  shall  be  met  by  an  objection  ;  we  shall  be  told 

that  independently  of  religion  it  will  be  difficult  to  disseminate 

a  system  of  practical  morality,  conformable  to  the 

Morality  apart  .._.,  ^  .  .  ,  ,, 

from  religion  diffi-  scientific  ideas  of  our  times.  A  professor  ot  the 
cult  to  teach,  Sorbonne  was  one  day  maintaining,  in  my  hear- 
ing, that  in  the  present  crisis  anything  like  systematic  moral 
instruction  is  gravely  in  danger.  Abstract  theories  cannot  be 
taught,  for  they  end  in  scepticism  ;  absolute  precepts  cannot 
be  taught,  for  they  are  false  ;  nothing  can  be  taught  but  facts, 
but  history :  one  may  be  certain  about  facts.  That  is  to  say, 
morality  cannot  be  taught  at  all. 

We  believe,  on  the  contrary,  that,  even  at  the  present  day, 
the  various  theories  in  regard  to  the  principles  of  morals  pos- 
sess a  certain  fund  of  ideas  in  common,  which  might  well  be 
made  the  subject  of  popular  instruction.  Even  the  most 
sceptical  and  egoistic  moral  theories  admit  that  the  individual 


/ 


ELEMENT  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  SOCIAL   LIFE.  403 

cannot  live  by  himself  and   for   himself   solely ;  that  egoism 
involves  a  narrowing   of   the  sphere   of   human    activity  that 

results  in  the  impoverishment  of  life.    To  live  fully  1 
oSble°*™"        ^"^^  completely  one  must  live   for    others.     Our 

actions  are  like  a  shadow  which  we  project  upon 
the  universe;  the  shadow  can  only  be  contracted  by  a  diminu- 
tion of  our  height;  and  the  best  way  to  enlarge  it  is  to 
become  generous — the  principle  of  egoism  is  interior  little- 
ness. The  idea  and  the  sentiment  which  lie  at  the  bottom  ofi 
all  human  morality  are  the  idea  and  sentiment  of  generosity  \ 
even  the  system^  of  Epicurus  and  of  Bentham  become  generous 
and  philanthropic  when  they  are  looked  at  from  a  certain 
height.  It  is  this  spirit  of  generosity  which  is  inherent  in 
every  system  of  morals  that  a  moralist  ought  always  to  en- 
deavour to  elicit  and  to  communicate  to  his  auditors.  What, 
after  all,  constitutes  the  outcome  of  the  years  of  instruc- 
tion to  which  we  devote  our  youth  ?  Abstract  forms?  More 
or  less  scholastic  ideas  inculcated  with  so  much  diffi- 
culty? No,  that  sort  of  thing  fades  rapidly  away;  what  sub- 
sist are  certain  sentiments.  From  history  one  acquires  a 
certain  cult  for  the  past  and  for  our  natural  tradition,  which  is 
useful  but  may  become  dangerous  if  it  is  carried  to  extremes ; 
from  the  study  of  philosophy  we  acquire  a  certain  openness  of 
mind,  a  disinterested  preoccupation  with  the  causes  of  things, 
a  love  of  hypothesis,  a  tolerance  for  difference  of  opinion ;  and 
from  a  study  of  ethics  we  acquire — what  ?  A  generosity  of 
heart  that  causes  us,  if  not  to  forget  ourselves,  at  least  not  to 
forget  other  people.  Other  studies  enlarge  the  mind,  this  one 
enlarges  the  heart.  It  is  unreasonable,  therefore,  to  be  ap- 
palled by  diversity  of  moral  systems,  for  they  are  all  of  them 
obliged  in  one  way  or  other  to  beat  up  to  the  physiological 
and  psychological  verity  of  love,  which  is  the  principle  of  allj 
altruism  and  presents  mankind  with  this  alternative :  to 
desiccate  or  to  expand.  Exclusively  egoistic  conduct  is  a  rot- 
ten fruit.  Egoism  is  eternal  illusion  and  avarice,  afraid  to 
.  .  .  t 

open  its  hands,  ignoring  the  necessity  of  mutual  credit,  and 

the   productivity   of   wealth    in   circulation.     In   morals  as   in 
political  economy,  circulation  is  necessary  ;  the  individual  must 


404  NON-RELIGION  OF   THE  FUTURE. 

share  in  the  life  of  the  society.      Moralists  have  been  wrong, 
perhaps,   in    overestimating  self-sacrifice.     It   may  be  denied 
that  virtue  is  at  bottom,  in  any  rigorous  sense  of  the  word,  a 
sacrifice,  but  it  cannot  be  denied  that  it  is  at  bottom  an  en- 
largement of  one's  self,  a  form  of  generosity.     And  this  senti- 
ment   of   generosity,  by    means   of   which   one    embraces   all 
humanity  and  the  universe,  is  what  constitutes  the  solid  base 
of   all   great   religions,    as    of    all    systems    of    morality ;    and 
therein  lies  the  reason  why  one  may,  without  danger,  study 
the  infinite  diversity  of  human  beliefs  in   regard   to  the  moral 
ideal — the   siimmum  bomiin.     There  is  a  unity  in  the  variety,  s 
a  unity  that  centres  in  the  idea  of  love.     To  be  generous  in  ( 
thought  and  deed  is  to  be  at  the  centre  of  all  great  speculation  i 
on  morals  and  religion. 

For  the    rest,  is  there  any  need  of   calling    in    the  aid    of 

mythical  and  mystical  ideas  in  our  effort  to  understand  human 

society  and  its  necessities,  and  among  them  the 

Necessity  of       necessity  of  disinterestedness  ?     The  profounder 

disinterestedness.  ^  '■ 

one's  intelligence  becomes,  the  more  adequately 
one  perceives  the  necessity,  the  inherent  rationality  of  the 
function  one  accomplishes  in  human  society ;  the  more  abso- 
lutely one  understands  one's  self  and  one's  self  as  a  social 
being.  A  functionary  above  reproach  is  always  ready  to  risk 
his  life  for  the  accomplishment  of  the  duty  with  which  he  is 
charged,  even  though  it  be  a  relatively  humble  one — that  of 
a  policeman  or  a  customs  ofificer,  of  a  signal  man,  of  a  railway 
employee  or  telegraph  operator.  Whoever  does  not  feel  him- 
self ready  to  die  at  a  given  moment  is  inferior  to  these. 
One  may  sit  in  judgment  on  one's  self  and  on  one's  ideal,  by 
asking  one's  self  this  question  :  for  what  idea,  for  what  person 
would  I  risk  my  life  ?  Whoever  has  not  a  reply  ready  has  an 
empty  or  vulgar  heart  ,  he  is  incapable  either  of  sympathizing 
with  or  of  achieving  anything  that  is  great  in  life,  for  he  is 
hidebound  to  the  limits  of  his  own  individuality;  he  is  feeble 
and  sterile,  and  lives  in  his  egoism  like  the  tortoise  in  his  shell. 
On  the  contrary,  he  who  is  conscious  of  a  willingness  to  face 
death  for  his  ideal  is  willing  and  anxious  to  maintain  his  ideal 
to  the  height  of  this  possible  sacrifice,  and  finds  in  the  fact  of 


ELEMENT  OF  RELIGIONS  IN   SOCIAL   LIFE.  405 

the  risk  a  supreme  and  constant  tension,  an  indefatigable 
energy  and  power  of  will.  The  sole  means  of  being  great ' 
in  life  is  to  be  conscious  of  indifference  to  death.  And  this  1 
courage  in  the  presence  of  death  is  not  the  privilege  of  re- 1 
ligions;  its  germ  exists  in  every  intelligent  and  loving  volition, 
in  the  very  sense  for  the  universal  which  gives  us  science 
and  philosophy  ;  it  shows  itself  in  the  spontaneous  impulses 
of  the  heart,  in  the  moral  inspirations  (which  are  as  truly  in- 
spirations as  those  of  the  poet)  that  art  and  morality  seek  to 
give  rise  to  in  us.  Independently  of  any  religious  conception, 
morality  is  privileged  to  belong  to  the  poetry  of  the  world  and 
to  the  reality  of  the  world.  This  poetry,  instead  of  being 
purely  contemplative,  exists  in  action  and  in  movement,  but 
the  sentiment  of  the  beautiful  is  none  the  less  one  of  the  essen- 
tial elements  of  it.  A  virtuous  life,  as  the  Greeks  said,  is  at 
once  both  beautiful  and  good.  Virtue  is  the  profoundest  of 
the  arts,  is  that  in  which  the  artist  and  the  work  of  art  are 
one.  In  the  old  oak  choir  stalls  in  our  churches,  lovingly 
sculptured  in  the  ages  of  faith,  the  same  slab  of  wood  some- 
times represents  on  one  side  the  life  of  a  saint  and  on  the 
other  a  pattern  of  roses  and  flowers,  so  arranged  that  each 
event  in  the  saint's  life  corresponds  to  a  petal  or  the  corolla  of 
a  flower  ;  his  self-sacrifice  or  his  martyrdom  lies  on  a  back- 
ground of  lilies  or  roses.  To  live  and  to  flower  side  by  side, 
at  once  to  suffer  and  to  blossom,  to  unite  in  one's  self  the 
reality  of  goodness  and  the  beauty  of  the  ideal,  is  the  double 
aim  of  life  ;  and  we  also,  like  the  saints  in  the  choir  stalls, 
should  present  both  sides. 

It  will  be  objected  that  if  the  dissemination  of  moral  ideas 

should  be  attempted  in  independence  of  religion,  it  will  lack 

an  element  of    sovereign    power:  the  idea  of    a 

Religious  sane-    sanction  after  death,  or  at  least  the  certitude  of 

tion  a  superfluity.  _  ' 

that  sanction.     It  may  be  replied  that  the  moral 

sentiment  in   its   purity  implies  precisely  doing  good   for   its 

own  sake.     And    if    it    be    rejoined    that  any  such  notion    is 

chimerical,  we  reply  that  the  power  of  the  moral  ideal  in  future 

societies  will  be  proportionate  to  its  height.'     It  is  commonly 

believed  that  the  highest  ideals  are  those  which  it  is  least  easy 

'  See  the  author's  Esquisse  d' une  morale,  pp.  236,  237. 


4o6  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

to  disseminate  among  the  masses;  the  future  will,  we  believe, 
demonstrate    the     opposite.       Everything    depends    on     the 
talent  of    the  propagandist.     Jesus    and    the  evangelists    did 
more  to  diffuse  morality  by  embodying  moral  ideas  in  a  form 
at    once  simple   and    sublime    than    by  menacing   men   with 
divine    vengeance    and  the  flames    of  Gehenna.      "  Love  ye 
one  another ;  by  this  shall  all  men  know  that  ye  are  my  dis- 
ciples, if  ye  have  love  one  to  another."     In  this  admirable  and 
eternal  precept  there  is  more  of  inexhaustible,  practical  powey 
than  in  :  ye  shall  be  cast  into  the  fire ;  there  shall  be  wailing 
and  gnashing  of  teeth.     Even  in  the  past,  it  is  by  favour  of 
great  sentiments  that  great  religious  revolutions  have  been 
achieved ;  and  these  great  sentiments  will  persist  in  the  future, 
shorn  of  the  superstitions  with  which  they  have  long  been 
associated.     Thousands  of  martyrs  have  gone  gaily  to  death 
for  religion ;  and  martyrdom  to  simple  honesty  and  goodness 
of  heart  is,  no  doubt,  more  difficult  though  not  less  realizable 
than  martyrdom    to    death.     Morality  will  lose    none    of   its 
practical  power  by  revealing  itself  more  and  more  as  it  is  ;  that 
is,  as  the  supreme  end  that  a  man  can  propose  to  himself.     The 
I  true  ideal  of  morality  is  charity,  and  charity  is  absolute  disin- 
terestedness, which  looks  for  a  recompense  neither  from  man 
nor  God.     Recompense  ought  never  to  enter  into  one's  cal- 
culations in  life  nor  into  the  hopes  with  which  one  regards  the 
future  ;  besides,  the  calculation  would  probably  be  bad.     Rec- 
ompense should  be  taken,  when  it  comes,  as  a  gift ;  as  some- 
thing distinctly  over  and  above  what  one  has  earned.     It  is 
leven  good  and  reasonable  never  to  do  right  with  any  other  ex- 
pectation than  that  of  ingratitude,  and  to  resign  one's  self  to 
receiving  after  death  no  reward  of  merit.     The  most  practical 
religious  instruction  is  an  appeal  to  generous  sentiments. 

To  maintain  the  necessity  of  the  idea  of  sanction  in  moral 
instruction  and    propagandism,  the    following   argument  has 
g    ,  ,  .   ,         been  employed.     Baudelaire,  it  is  said,  in  the  last 
triumphant  days    of    his    intellectual    life,    sketched    a    great 

criminal.  drama,    destined    to    astonish    the    partisans    of 

middle-class  morality.     The  hero  of  the  drama,  stripping  him- 
self of  vulgar  prejudice,  was  to  commit  one  after  another,  and 


ELEMENT  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  SOCIAL  LIFE.  407 

with  an  equal  success,  the  crimes  which  are  supposed  to  be 
the  most  terrible — was  to  kill  his  father,  to  dishonour  his 
brother,  to  violate  his  sister  and  his  mother,  to  betray  his 
country,  and  finally,  his  work  in  the  world  accomplished,  in 
possession  of  fortune  and  reputation,  was  to  retire  to  some 
charming  site,  under  some  soft  sky,  and  to  exclaim  with  all  the 
tranquillity  in  the  world:  "Let  us  now  enjoy  in  peace  the 
fruits  of  our  crime."  What  reply  could  you  make,  it  is  asked, 
to  such  a  man  and  to  those  who  might  be  tempted  to  imitate 
him,  if  you  had  not  at  hand  the  menaces  of  religion  and  the 
prospect  of  future  punishment?  How  could  you  disturb  the 
criminal's  promised  joy  ? 

Let  us  consider  first  in  what  the  criminal's  promised  joy  can 
consist.  Baudelaire's  hero  is  naturally  incapable  of  appreciat- 
ing the  pleasures  of  the  hearth  ;  a  man  who  has 
isfe^iteeiP"  l^illed  his  father  can  find  little  delight  in  the 
birth  of  a  son.  He  is  equally  incapable  of 
appreciating  a  love  of  science  for  science's  sake,  for  the  man 
who  could  love  science  for  science's  sake  would  never  be 
tempted  to  become  a  great  criminal,  and  as  for  pure  aesthetic 
pleasures,  moral  delicacy  and  aesthetic  delicacy  in  general  go 
hand  in  hand  ;  it  is  not  probable  that  a  being  incapable  of  remorse 
and  insensitive  to  all  the  shades  and  varieties  of  the  moral  life 
would  be  apt  to  be  sensible  of  all  the  shades  and  varieties  of 
beauty  and  of  aesthetic  enjoyment.  The  capacity  for  a  sincere 
admiration  of  the  beautiful  corresponds  always  to  a  possibility 
of  strong  repugnances  to  the  ugly,  and  repugnance  for  the  ugly 
is  scarcely  conceivable  apart  from  a  repugnance  for  what  is  ugly 
in  immorality.  It  is  true  that  Byron  depicted  certain  satanic 
heroes  accomplishing  the  blackest  of  crimes  without  any  loss  to 
their  elegance,  to  their  good  manners,  to  their  high  spirit  and 
courage,  but  his  heroes,  not  to  raise  the  question  of  their  pos- 
sibility in  real  life,  are  extremely  unhappy;  they,  like  Byron 
himself  and  his  disciples,  are  the  victims  of  a  refined 
remorse,  distaste  of  life,  misanthropy  ;  the  only  art  that  lies 
within  their  range  is  pessimistic  art,  which  but  aggravates  their 
malady.  Their  aesthetic  joys  are  veritable  agonies.  Or  if, 
Byron  and  Byronism  apart,  one  keeps  close  to  the  truth,  one 


4o8  NON-RELIGION  OF   THE  FUTURE. 

may  well  doubt  whether  true  aesthetic  pleasures  are  more 
within  the  reach  of  a  genuine  criminal  than  of  an  educated 
butcher's  boy.  His  pleasure  would  be  confined  to  the  monot- 
onous round  of  wine,  women,  and  play ;  and  he  could  not  take 
wine  with  a  light  heart,  for  men  talk  under  the  influence  of 
wine ;  and  he  must  play  but  little,  for  men  ruin  themselves  at 
play  ;  so  that  there  remains  nothing  but  women  who  constitute, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  habitual  consolation  of  criminals.  In 
all  times  police  have  looked  for  criminals,  and  found  them,  the 
day  after  their  offence  in  places  of  ill-repute.  Very  well, 
the  defence  of  society  apart,  we  see  no  reason  for  depriving 
the  poor  wretches  of  the  restricted  joys  that  remain  to  them. 
It  would  be  doing  too  much  honour  to  Baudelaire's  hero  to 
give  him  an  immortality  in  the  next  life,  simply  as  a  means  of 
making  him  pay  dearer  than  he  has  already  done  in  this  for 
the  few  kisses  that  he  has  purchased  with  his  blood-stained 
gold.  He  suffers  enough  as  it  is,  the  only  additional  suffering 
that  could  be  wished  for  him  is  that  of  remorse,  but  remorse 
is  a  sign  of  superiority.  Real  criminals,  temperamental 
criminals,  those  who  are  the  victims  of  what  is  known  as  moral 
insanity,  are  absolutely  ignorant  of  remorse,  because  they  are 
perfectly  adapted  to  crime  ;  they  are  made  for  the  immoral 
environment  in  which  they  live,  and  live  at  ease,  and  experi- 
ence no  desire  for  a  change.  To  perceive  that  a  door  is  low, 
one's  stature  must  be  great.  If  Lady  Macbeth's  hand  had 
been  rude  and  her  eye  dull,  she  never  would  have  desired  to 
wash  ofT  the  drop  of  blood.  To  suffer  is  to  pass  beyond  the 
bounds  of  one's  environment ;  the  criminal  who  experiences 
remorse  has  strayed  less  far  from  the  human  type  than  the 
one  who  does  not  feel  remorse.  The  first  may  become  a  man 
once  more,  the  second  is  incapable  of  crossing  the  line  of 
demarcation  which  separates  man  and  beast,  for  he  is  incapable 
of  perceiving  it ;  he  is  walled  in  with  his  crime,  and  is  a  brute 
or  a  madman. 

But,  it  will  be  objected,  if  this  brute  or  this  madman  sees 
no  divine  menace  above  his  head,  would  not  many  people 
regard  his  situation  as  enviable,  and  labour  as  they  are  labour- 
ing, to  destroy  the  moral  and  human  instincts  in  themselves. 


ELEMENT  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  SOCIAL   LIFE.  409 

to  place  themselves  precisely  in   the   position   of   Baudelaire's 

hero  ?     We  do  not  believe  that  faith  in  a  religious  sanction 

could  greatly  change  anybody's   attitude   toward 
And  will  in  1  .      •  /-   •  cr  u    . 

the  future  be         sucli  an  abnormal  being.     Crnne  otters  man  but 
viewed  with  ^j^g  attraction,  that  of  wealth  ;  but  wealth,  what- 

horror.  .  1  •         1  r      1 

ever  value  it  may  have  in  the  eyes  ot  the  peo- 
ple, is  but  one  among  the  good  things  of  the  world.  Offer 
a  poor  man  a  million  dollars  coupled  with  the  gout,  and 
if  he  had  an  atom  of  common-sense  he  would  refuse. 
Propose  to  make  him  rich,  on  condition  of  his  being 
bandy-legged  or  humpbacked,  and  he  would  probably 
refuse  also  ;  in  especial,  if  he  were  young.  All  women  would 
refuse.  The  difficulty  experienced  in  finding  people  to  fill 
certain  situations  which  are  in  themselves  well  paid — that,  for 
instance,  of  public  executioner — demonstrates  that,  even  in  the 
eyes  of  the  people,  money  is  not  everything.  If  it  were,  no 
menace  of  punishment  after  death  could  prevent  men  gener- 
ally from  becoming  assassins.'  I  know  women,  and  men  also, 
who  would  refuse  a  fortune  if  they  were  obliged  to  acquire  it 
by  becoming  butchers — so  great  are  certain  repugnances,  even 
purely  sentimental  and  aesthetic  repugnances.  The  moral 
horror  of  crime,  which  is  in  the  generality  of  cases  stronger 
than  any  other  repugnance,  will  always  separate  us  from 
criminals,  whatever  the  prevailing  beliefs  as  to  life  after  death. 
This  horror  will  be  still  stronger  when  for  the  habitual  hatred, 
anger,  and  desire  for  revenge,  that  the  presence  of  a  criminal 

now  causes  us,  shall  be  substituted  by  degrees  a 
And  with  pity.      ,,.  ,.  ,  .  1.,  rir-r- 

feeling  of  pity — the  pity  which  we  feel  for  interior 

or  malformed    beings,   for    the    unconscious    monstrosities   of 

nature.     One  may  sometimes  envy  the  life  of  what  one  hates; 

but  one  can   never  envy  the  life  of  what  one  pities.     Hatred 

signifies  the  presence  of  some  element   of  attraction  in  the 

'  M.  de  Molinari  has  calculated  the  chances  of  death  to  which  the  profession  of 
assassin  is  exposed,  as  compared  with  certain  dangerous  occupations,  as  that  of 
miner.  He  reaches  the  following  result  :  that  an  assassin  runs  less  risk  of  death 
than  a  miner  ;  an  insurance  company  might  demand  a  smaller  premium  of  assassins 
than  it  would  be  obliged  to  demand  of  miners.  (See  Esquisse  d'ttne  morale,  the 
chapter  on  Le  risque  et  la  lutte,  i.  4.) 


4IO  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

object  hated;  but  pity  is  the  highest  and  most  definitive  moral  \ 

barrier  that  can  exist  between  two  beings. 

The    sole    respectable  and  durable    element  in  the  idea  of 

sanction  is  neither  the  notion   of  recompense  nor  of  penalty, 

_,,    .     ,,         but  that  of  the  ideal  of  goodness  as  possessed  of 
The  durable  °         _  ^ 

element  in  this  sufficient  force  to  impose  itself  upon  nature, 
notion  of  sanction,   .^^^^  ^^  envelop  the  world;    it   seems  to  us  good 

that  the  just  and  gentle  man  should  have  the  last  word  in  the 
universe,  but  this  kingdom  of  goodness  of  which  humanity- 
dreams  does  not  need  for  its  establishment  the  procedure  of  a 
human  kingdom.  The  moral  sentiment  may  be  considered 
the  great  power  in  the  universe.  The  inherent  tendency  of 
morality  gradually  to  subdue  nature  to  its  purposes  by  the 
instrumentality  of  mankind  is  the  most  striking  fact  in  the 
realm  of  philosophy,  and  the  one  which  is,  of  all  others, 
the  most  appropriate  to  excite  the  spirit  of  proselytism. 
No  myth  is  necessary  to  arouse  an  ardour  for  goodness  and 
a  sense  of  universal  fraternity.  What  is  great  and  beautiful  is 
self-sufficing. 

Whatever  may  be  the  beliefs  that  men  will  one  day  hold  on 
a  life  after  death,  and  the  conditions  which  render  possible  the 

final  triumph  of  goodness,  the  notion  of  such  a 
dead^*  ^"'^  ^^^      flriumph   is  an    ultimate    moral   and    social  idea, 

which  will  always  lend  itself  readily  to  propa- 
gandism,  because  it  is  the  foundation  of  all  religions  without 
being  in  any  wise  essentially  bound  up  with  religious  dogma; 
it  is  in  essence  a  cult  for  memory,  for  veneration  and  love  of 
ancestry,  for  respect  for  death  and  for  the  dead.  Far  from 
necessarily  declining  with  the  decline  of  religion,  a  reverence 
for  the  dead  may  rapidly  increase  because  the  metaphj'sical 
sentiment  of  the  unknown  in  death  will  increase.  The  spirit 
of  democracy  itself  inclines  the  masses  to  an  uneasy  admiration 
in  the  presence  of  death,  the  great  democrat,  the  great  leveller 
who  wanders  incessantly  about  humanity,  and  planes  down 
equally  all  excesses  of  misery  and  happiness ;  casts  us,  without 
distinction  of  persons,  into  the  great  abyss  from  the  depths  of 
which  the  attentive  ear  has  caught  no  sound  of  an  arrested 
falL 


ELEMENT  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  SOCIAL   LIFE.  411 

The  Greeks,  who  of  all  ancient  people  are  supposed  to  have 
been  the  least  religious,  were  of  all  ancient  people  those  who 
showed  most  reverence  for  the  dead.  The  most 
Gre^™^  ^  irreligious  city  in  modern  times,  Paris,  is  that 
in  which  the  fete  for  the  dead  is  most  solemn, 
in  which  the  entire  people  rise  to  celebrate  it,  and  that  also  in 
which  we  see  the  most  flippant  street  Arab  take  off  his  hat  in 
the  presence  of  a  funeral  and  salute  the  visible  image  of  the 
eternal  enigma.  A  respect  for  the  dead  which  binds  the 
generations  of  mankind  together,  which  is  the  essence  of 
the  most  certain  form  of  immortality,  that  of  memory  and 
example,  will  not  disappear  with  the  decay  of  religion.  Corpus 
Cliristi  may  be  forgotten,  but  All  Souls'  Day  will  be  observed 
till  the  end  of  human  time. 

///.  Associations  for  cesthetic  purposes — Worship  of  art  atid 
nature. 

I.  The  third    notion  which  is  destined  to  survive   historic 

religions,  and  which  has  been  as  yet  imperfectly  realized,  is 

that  of  voluntary  association  for  the  purpose  of 

enjoyment  of  prod-   enjoying  in  common  some  aesthetic  pleasure  of 

nets  of  aesthetic       ^  high    and    morally  refining  kind  ;  therein    lies 

genius.  ^       .  .  -^  ^ 

what  will  survive  of  the  ceremonial  of  diverse 
religions.  The  artistic  elements  pent  up  in  various  religions 
will  disengage  themselves,  will  become  independent  of  tradi- 
tion, of  symbolism  taken  seriously,  and  of  superstition. 
Science,  metaphysics,  and  morals  all  have  their  poetical  side, 
and  in  so  far  are  analogous  to  religion. 

The  pure  abstraction  by  which  the  thinker  escapes  beyond 

the    limits  of   sentiment    is    an    unstable  and  unlasting   state 

Destined  °^    mind;    abstraction    contains    something    ficti- 

prevalence  of         tious,    for    nothing    abstract    exists    in     nature ; 

admiration,  u    ».         ^-  •  r  1  1  •      ^ 

abstraction  is  of  value  only  as  an  instrument  ; 
its  aim  is  to  grapple  with  some  one  side  of  the  reality,  to  enable 
one  subsequently  more  easily  to  embrace  the  reality  as  a 
whole.  Every  general  result  that  abstraction  can  achieve  may 
sooner  or  later  become  the  object  of  a  sentiment.  The  prog- 
ress of  science,  as  Mr.  Spencer  says,  has  always  been  accom- 


4'^  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

panied  side  by  side  by  a  corresponding  progress  in  the  faculty 
of  admiration  ;  this  faculty  must  inevitably  develop,  in  the 
future,  when  man  will  have  attained  a  less  fragmentary  and  more 
genuinely  synthetic  conception  of  the  universe.  Admiration 
is  one  of  the  surviving  elements  of  the  religious  sentiment. 
Man  will  always  be  subject  to  astonishment,  and  will  always 
contemplate  the  universe  in  a  spirit  of  wonder,  although,  no 
doubt,  the  time  must  come  when  he  will  cease  to  kneel. 
Artistic  genius,  even  when  inspired  by  great  philosophical 
and  cosmological  ideas,  remains  essentially  different  from 
religious  genius  properly  so  called,  the  distinctive  character  of 
which  is  to  be  dogmatic.  The  Greeks  were  of  all  peoples  the 
most  poetical  and  the  least  religious.  Poetry,  like  metaphysics, 
consists  in  constructions  in  the  realm  of  imagination  and 
thought,  which  are  capable  of  infinite  variety  and  tend  to 
overrun  the  whole  compass  of  the  human  mind.  Dogmatic 
religion,  on  the  contrary,  tends  continually  to  limit  the  fer- 
tility of  the  imagination  and  of  philosophic  thought ;  it  im- 
plies a  certain  poverty  of  mind  to  cling  always  to  the  same 
conception,  to  feel  no  desire  to  pass  beyond  it,  to  create. 
Metaphysical  hypothesis,  unshackled  by  dogma,  gifted  with 
variety  and  liberty,  must  inevitably  be  fertile  even  in  the 
domain  of  art ;  it  cannot  dwell  forever  among  abstractions,  it 
must  produce  a  corresponding  sentiment,  a  poetic  sentiment 
which  will  not  be  the  naive  assurance  of  faith  but  the  proper 
emotional  reaction  in  the  presence  of  a  transformation  of  the 
real  world  under  the  influence  of  thought  conceiving  the  ideal. 
For  the  philosopher,  as  for  the  poet,  every  surface  that 
science  touches,  every  form  and  figure  in  the  world  that  the 
finger  of  knowledge  taps,  gives  forth  a  sound,  not  of  the 
void,  but,  so  to  speak,  of  the  "  essential  inwardness  of  life." 
They  resemble  the  marbles  in  Italy  which  give  forth,  beneath 
a  blow,  a  sound  as  harmonious  as  their  forms.  There  is  an 
inner  harmony  that  may  well  go  along  with  harmony  of 
surface ;  science  shows  us  the  laws  of  surfaces,  philosophy 
and  poetry  put  us  into  sympathy  with  what  lies  below 
the  surface.  If  it  is  impossible  to  deny,  as  pure  idealists 
attempt    to   deny,   the    objective    character    of  the    world    in 


ELEMENT  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  SOCIAL  LIFE.  413 

which  we  live,   one   can,   at  least,   not  say  where  objectivity- 
begins  and  subjectivity  ends.     Between   Naghiri  and  Yarkand 
there   exists  an  almost    unknown    tribe  called   Hunza,  whose 
language    presents    a    peculiarity    which    it    is    impossible    to 
separate  from  one's  notion  of  humanity;  one  cannot,  in  their 
speech,  express   the  idea  of  a  horse  simply,  but  must  say  my 
horse  or  thy  horse  or  his  horse.     Our  language  is  more  perfect 
than  that  of  the  Hunza,  but  we  are  absolutely  incapable   of 
conceiving  things  in  abstraction  from  all  notion  of  human  per- 
sonality ;  in  especial,  when  we  are  dealing,  not  with  individual, 
external  objects,  but  with  the  cosmos  as  a  whole.     There  is 
no  such  thing  as  a  world  existing  in  isolation  ;  there  is  only 
your  world,  my  world,  the  human  world.     Man  is  so  insep- 
arably associated  with  his  conception  of  the  universe  that  it  is 
impossible  to  know  what  our  universe  would  be  apart   from 
us,  or  what  we  should  be  apart   from  it.     The  metaphysician 
and    the   poet    are    at    one    in    celebrating    the   projection   of 
humanity  into  all  things.     At  their  highest  points  poetry  and 
philosophy     coincide.       Metaphysics    is    the    poetry   of    pure 
reason,   poetry  is  the  metaphysics   of  the  senses  and  of   the 
heart.     The  two  supply  us  with  our  conception  of  the  world, 
and,  after  all,  since  we  are  the  product  of  the  world,  it  must  be 
in  some  sense  akin  to  all  that  we  contain.     The  fundamental 
secret  of  things  lies  at  the  bottom  of  human  thought.     Poetry 
is  a  light  and  winged  creature,  Plato  says,  but  he  was  speaking  of 
the  poetry  of  the  poet,  of  his  sonorous  and  harmonious  words  ; 
but  the  poetry  of  the  metaphysician,  the  poetry  of  profound 
ideas  and  hidden  causes,  is  also  a  winged  thing,  but  winged 
not  to  be  enabled  to  skim  the  surfaces  of  things  as  a  land  bird 
skims  the  surface  of  land  and  sea,  but   to  be  enabled  to  dive 
as  "  divers  "  do  when  they  plunge  into  the  limpid  waves,  and, 
at  the  risk  of  asphyxia,  walk  upon  the  opaque  bottom  of  the 
sea  and  tear  it  up  with  their  beaks  in  search  of  food  and  come 
up  shaking  their  feathers  from  none  knows  where.    Sometimes 
their  search  has  been  in  vain,  sometimes   they  bring  up  buried 
treasure  ;  and  they  alone  of  all  beings  employ  their  wings  not 
to  skim  and  to  touch  the  surface  of  things,  but  to  penetrate 
to   the   depths   of   them.     The    last   word    of   poetry,    as   ofi 


.% 


414  x\OM -RELIC, ION  OF   THE  FUTURE. 

thought,  will  be  to  dive  beneath  the  moving  flood  and  sweep 
of  things,  and  seize  the  secret  of  the  material  universe  which 
is  also  the  secret  of  the  spiritual  universe. 

II.  The  more  feeble  dogmatic  religions  become,  the  greater 

the  necessity  for  a  stronger  and  higher  art.     Humanity  needs 

4  *  ;„  „  ^„,.    a    certain    amount    of    distraction,    and    even,  as 

iirt    111    a    UJcaS' 

ure  to  take  the  Pascal  said,  of  "diversion."  A  human  beast, 
p  ace  c  re  igion.      ^^^j^  ^^  ^^   English   or  German   labouring   man, 

knows  but  one  distraction  in  the  world  :  eating  and  drinking, 
especially  drinking.  Many  English  labourers  never  go  to  the 
theatre  or  to  church,  never  read,  know  nothing  of  the 
pleasures  of  home  ;  the  gin-palace  and  gin  take  the  place  of 
art,  religion,  and  the  family.  Opium  plays  the  same  role  in 
China.  They  who  do  not  know  how  to  amuse  themselves 
brutalize  themselves;  self-brutalization  is,  at  least,  a  change, 
an  element  of  variety  in  the  monotony  of  life,  a  break  in  the 
continuity  of  the  chain  of  misery.  Oblivion  from  time  to 
time  is  imperative.  One  of  the  ancients  said  that  he  would 
rather  be  a  master  in  the  science  of  oblivion  than  in  that  of 
memory.  The  only  porches  of  forgetfulness  that  are  open  to 
the  more  debased  portions  of  mankind  are  sleep  and  intoxica- 
tion ;  people  at  a  higher  stage  of  civilization  may  approach 
art  and  adoration ;  and  these  two  forms  of  distraction  are  the 
highest  and  sweetest.' 

The    amount    of  activity  devoted  by  men  to  religion   and 
aesthetics    may    appear  at  first  sight  useless   and   even  harm- 
ful ;  but  it  must  be  recognized  that  humanity  is 
Art  as  a  iver-    ^^j^^^yg  possessed  of  a  surplus  which  must  be  ex- 
pended in  some  way  or  other.     Prayer  and   reli- 
gious exercises,  regarded  as  occupations  simply,  are  of  the  least 
harmful  of  pastimes,  are  of  the  least  vain  of  the  various  forms 
of  distraction.     Prayer  and  the  church  have  hitherto  been  the 
art  and  theatre  of  the  poor.     No  doubt  art  and  prayer  cannot 
be  made  to  constitute  alone  the  whole  of  life  ;  mystics  have 
believed  that  it  is  practical  life  that  is  the  diversion,  and  that 
the    serious    element    in    things    is    religious    contemplation. 

'  Slaves,  exiles,  and  unfortunates  generally  drink.     The    Irish    and  Poles  are, 
(J^according  to  statistics,  the  most  drunken  peoples  in  Europe. 


*. 


ELEMENT  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  SOCIAL   LIFE.  4^5 

Precisely  the  opposite  is  true  :  preoccupation  with  art  and 
metaphysics  should  dominate  human  life,  but  not  absorb  it. 
Religion  in  especial,  with  its  myths,  is  too  generously  com- 
pounded of  illusion  and  downright  fiction  to  be  made  the 
centre  of  life  ;  religion  is  a  radiant  coloured  cloud  that  wreaths 
the  summit  of  the  mountain.  If  we  climb  up  into  it  we  per- 
ceive that  it  is  empty  and  sombre  within,  that  it  is  a  cloud, 
damp  and  cold  like  other  clouds  and  radiant  only  from  below. 
The  poetry  of  religion  may  survive  the  dogmatism  of 
religion  ;  as  articles  of  faith,  religious  ideas  are  to-day  anach- 
ronisms ;    as     practical    and    philosophical    con- 

iEsthetic  ele-       ceptions  they  are,   like    all    works    of    art,    in    a 
ment  in  religion.  tr  j  ^ 

measure  imperishable.  Who,  asks  Lange,  could 
wish  to  refute  a  Mass  of  Palestrina  or  accuse  the  Madonna  of 
Raphael  of  error?  Religions  have  inspired  literary  and  artis- 
tic labours — products  which  will  survive  them  at  least  in  part, 
and  will  constitute  ultimately  their  best  justification.  What 
remains  of  the  Crusades  to-day?  Among  the  best  things  that 
they  gave  us  must  be  counted  certain  flowers  that  they 
brought  back  with  them  and  propagated  among  us,  for  exam- 
ple, Damascus  roses,  and  certain  colours  and  perfumes  which 
have  survived  the  great  rising  of  Europe  against  Asia  in  sup- 
port of  certain  ideas  and  passions  which  are  to-day  forever 
extinct. 

Looked  at  from  a  certain    point  of   view,  priests   are   the 
artists  of  the  people,  but  the  genuine  artist  ought  to  move 
Defects  of  ^^''^^^  ^^^^  times,  understand  new  motives  and  not 

ssthetic  side  of       repeat  indefinitely,  from  generation  to  generation, 
religion.  ^^^     sd^mo.     musical     or    poetical    theme.       The 

feeble  side  of  religious  zesthetics  is  that  its  repertoire  of 
incident  and  mystery  is  severely  limited,  that  it  has  repeated 
itself  for  centuries.  It  must  enlarge  the  number  of  its  pieces, 
must  abandon  those  it  has.  Nothing  could  be  better  than  to 
assemble  for  the  purpose  of  experiencing  in  common  an  emotion 
at  once  aesthetic  and  serious,  seeing  and  hearing  something 
beautiful ;  but  it  is  impossible  that  this  emotion  should  be  in- 
definitely prolonged  by  a  repetition  of  the  same  stimulus. 
Rites  are  irreconcilable  with  the  double  aim  of  art :  variety 


4i6  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

and  progress  in  the  expression  of  the  emotions  themselves. 
Sooner  or  later  the  rudimentary  art  of  ritual  must  give  place 
to  genuine  and  progressive  art,  just  as  the  instinctive  and 
eternally  monotonous  architecture  practised  by  bird  and  insect 
has  become  the  infinitely  varied  architecture  which  has  pro- 
duced and  will  produce  masterpieces  of  the  most  varied  kind, 
from  Notre  Dame  de  Paris  to  the  Alhambra. 

In  general,    men  gather  together  to  listen.     Conferences, 
sermons,  songs  are  the   most  permanent  features  in  religious 

cult.     They  will  probably  exist  in  some  form  or 
Transformation        i.\  ■       c    t.  •    j.-  •       ^i  r    ^i 

of  the  sermon.  Other  m  future  associations  as  in  those  of  the 
past.  One  point  will  become  increasingly  impor- 
tant in  every  spoken  word  addressed  to  the  people,  and  that 
is  the  instructive  aspect  of  what  is  said  ;  if  one  is  to  address 
the  people,  one  must  teach  them  something.  Well,  there  are 
three  kinds  of  instruction,  scientific,  literary  and  moral,  or 
metaphysical.  The  first  will  have  to  be  more  and  more 
generously  given,  not  only  in  school  but  wherever  adults 
congregate.  The  two  other  sorts  may  be  given  simultan- 
eously by  lectures.  The  most  interesting  elements  in  many 
sermons  and  conferences  are  the  texts  and  citations  brought 
to  the  hearers'  attention  by  the  speaker.  The  choice  of  these 
texts,  the  manner  in  which  they  are  expounded  and  intro- 
duced to  the  comprehension  of  the  multitude,  constitute  the 
value  of  the  sermon.  In  other  words,  the  best  sermon  con- 
sists simply  in  the  reading  and  exposition  of  some  choice 
page  from  a  good  book.  In  Germany,  in  England,  in  the 
Indies  preachers  of  certain  liberal  sects  choose  their  texts 
indifferently  from  among  the  whole  number  of  the  sacred 
books  of  humanity.  A  still  more  liberal  epoch  may  be  con- 
ceived, when  texts  will  be  selected  not  only  from  among  the 
writings  of  the  poets  of  ancient  times  but  also  from  among 
the  writings  of  men  of  genius  of  all  times  ;  every  great  work  will 
be  read  and  commented  on  as  a  sacred  book.  The  most  com- 
plete expression  of  the  so-called  religious  sentiment,  apart 
from  the  vast  Hindu  or  Jewish  epochs,  is,  after  all,  to  be 
found  in  certain  profane  masterpieces,  from  the  works  of 
Plato  and  Marcus  Aurelius  to  Kant's  "  Hymn  to  Duty  ";  from 


ELEMENT  OF  RELIGIONS  IN   SOCIAL   LIFE.  417 

the  dramas  of  yEschylus  to  the  "  Hamlet  "  of  Shakespeare,  to 
the  "  Polyeucte  "  of  Corneille,  and  the  "  Contemplations  "  of 
Victor  Hugo. 

Religious  prophets,  like  priests,  will  be  replaced  by  great 

poets,  great  metaphysicians,  great  men  of  science.     Each  of  us 

will  be  able  to  choose  our  prophet,  to  prefer  the 

Transformation    ^gj^j^^  which  is  best  adapted  to  our  personal  intel- 
01  tne  prophet.         '='  '■  ... 

ligence  and  best  serves  as  an  mtermediary  between 
us  and  the  eternal  truth,  and  each  of  us  will  be  in  the  last 
resort  our  own  priest.' 

Apart  from   poetry  and  eloquence,   the  most  religious   of 
the  arts,  the  most  capable  of  inspiring  the  multitude  with  an 

elevated  sympathy  has  been,  and  will  be  music. 

Wagner  was  not  absolutely  wrong  in  his  notion 
that  music  will  be  the  religion  of  the  future,  or,  at  least,  the  cult 
of  the  future.  We  do  not  speak  of  instrumental  music  only,  but 
also  and  in  especial  of  vocal  music,  of  choruses  such  as  are  often 
met  with  in  Germany,  in  which  many  voices  unite  in  producing 
the  same  chant,  in  beating  the  same  rhythm  which  has  been 
regulated  in  advance  by  genius.  Thus  conceived,  music  is  truly 
religious  and  socially  significant.^ 

For  the  rest,  almost  every  art  is  reconcilable  with  the  grav- 
ity of  religious  sentiment,  for  every  art  at  its  best  awakens, 
Kinshi  of         "°  ^^^^  ^\\^rv  poetry  and  music,  a  contemplative 
jEsthetic  and  re-      and  philosophical  mood.     One    may  agree  with 
ligions  sentiment.  ^^^^^^^  ^j^^^  religion  will  gradually  be  transmuted 

into  art,  and  even  at  the  present  day  profane  art  and  sacred  art  are 
rather  different  than  opposed.  These  differences  will  always 
subsist ;  it  is  evident  that  a  pas  redouble,  for  example,  can  never 
be  the  symbol  of  a  really  profound  idea  of  nature  or  of  human- 
ity or  of  the  infinite.     Religious  aesthetics,  even  though  it  be- 

'  "  Prophecy  is  not  dead,  it  flourishes  under  another  name.  Religious  reforms, 
emancipation  from  oppressive  authority,  war  against  corrupt  institutions,  religious 
poetry,  philosophy  of  history — are  all  represented  under  various  titles  in  the 
modern  world.  The  old  trunk  has  branched  again  simply."  (M.  Albert  Reville, 
p.  229,  ProUgomenes  de  V Histoire  des  religions.) 

*  Music  at  the  present  day  forms  a  part  of  the  cult ;  but  either  it  is  supplied  by 
members  of  the  faithful,  in  which  event  it  is  sufhciently  bad,  for  the  majority  of 
the  faithful  are  ignorant  of  music  ;    or  it  is  provided  by  mercenaries,  and  it  is  then 


4l8  NON-RELIGION  OF   THE  FUTURE. 

comes  continuously  larger  and  more  tolerant,  will  exclude  to 
the  end  certain  inferior  forms  of  art. 

If  art  is  to  take  the  place  of  religion,  it  must  progress  in 
certain  directions,  not  only  in  its  forms  but  in  its  material 
methods  of  appeal.  Note  how  much  better 
forms iriay art.  church  services  are  presented,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  hygiene,  than  art  exhibitions  are.  Mod- 
eration is  practised  in  the  matter  of  light  ;  the  rooms  are 
large  and  well  supplied  with  fresh  air,  are  of  an  almost  constant 
temperature  ;  and  the  aesthetic  services  are  restful  rather 
than  exhausting.  Compare  with  all  this  the  entertainment 
given  in  concert  halls  and  theatres,  where  multitudes  are 
packed  together  under  unnecessarily  brilliant  lights,  where  the 
spectators  are  wrought  up  and  excited  and  exhausted  in  a 
hundred  ways  and  pass  out,  finally,  fatigued,  enfeebled, 
nervously  keyed  up,  and  pursued  by  a  host  of  sensual 
images.  Church  architects  are  infinitely  more  conversant  with 
hygiene  than  those  who  build  our  theatres;  they  understand 
that  if  the  heavens  are  to  be  shut  out  at  all,  space  enough 
must  be  shut  in  to  give  the  heart  and  chest  room  to  ex- 
pand. Among  the  Greeks,  where  art  really  did  form  a  sort  of 
religion,  the  theatres  were  open  to  the  sky  so  that  the  specta- 
tors might  really  repose  in  body  while  they  gave  up  their 
minds  to  be  played  upon  by  the  poet. 

Just  as  existing  profane  art  must  undergo  certain  transforma- 
tions before  it  can  be  expected  fully  to  satisfy  a  sane  and  well- 
balanced  nature,  so  religious  art,  if  it  is  to  be  true 

In  religious  art.    .       -,      ,  •    ,        ,     ,         ,         •  .    ,  r  -^      ir 

to  Its  highest  tendencies,  must  transform  itself, 
must  rid  itself  of  precisely  the  elements  which  to-day  seem 
distinctively  to  constitute  it,  namely  its  marvellous  sub- 
ject-matter  and    conventional   handling.     The  marvellous   in 

more  commonly  good,  but  is  generally  ill  chosen.  Musical  education  will  one  day 
probably  be  much  more  wide-spread  than  it  is  to-day;  it  would  not  be  more  difficult, 
and  would  always  be  more  useful,  to  teach  children  the  elements  of  music  than  to 
teach  them  the  mystery  of  the  Incarnation.  More  than  that,  if  religious  music 
were  chosen  not  only  from  so-called  sacred  works  but  from  the  works  of  classical 
masters  generally,  one  might  be  certain  of  hearing  good  music,  varied  in  style 
and  movement,  and  capable  of  pleasing  all  those  in  whom  the  xsthetic  sense  is 
developed. 


ELEMENT  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  SOCIAL   LIFE.  4^9 

art  was  long  necessary,  as  we  have  seen,  to  capture  men's 
attention ;  contemporaneous  art  does  not  need  to  make 
this  appeal.  All  art  took  its  rise  from  convention,  from 
ceremonial,  but  has  enfranchised  itself  by  degrees.  It  might 
even  be  established  as  a  general  law  that  the  more  per- 
fect, the  more  expressive,  arts  become — the  more,  that  is 
to  say  they  seek  precisely  to  body  forth  the  sentiment  of  the 
artist ;  and  the  more  expressive  they  are  the  less  conventional 
and  less  pompous  they  must  be.  Amplification  and  exag- 
geration are  suppressed.  The  artist  occupies  toward  his  emo- 
tions the  same  relation  that  the  translator  of  a  great  work  does 
to  his  text :  his  translation  will  be  regarded  nowadays  as  perfect 
in  proportion  as  it  is  close,  as  it  follows  the  text,  line  by  line  and 
word  by  word  ;  formerly  the  tradition  was  otherwise,  and  every 
translator  felt  himself  obliged  to  amplify.  Art  possesses  ^r^^/ 
means  of  inspiring  emotion,  but  not  gross  means.  Public  speak- 
ers at  the  present  day  make  much  less  frequent  use  of  gesture  ; 
the  actor  no  longer  steps  out  on  the  stage  in  the  cothurnus ; 
the  language  of  verse  is  approaching  the  language  of  ordinary 
life ;  music  is  breaking  away  from  the  conventions  of  counter- 
point. What  is  true  of  the  diverse  arts  is  true  also  of  religious 
aesthetics,  which  will  one  day  abandon  the  fictitious  ornaments 
and  vain  ceremonies  of  ritualism.  If  an  aesthetic  expression 
of  some  profound  sentiment  is  to  be  true  and  durable,  it  must 
itself  be  profound,  must  be  like  what  it  expresses,  must  be 
murmured  rather  than  articulate.  What  renders  certain 
verse  eternal  is  its  simplicity :  the  more  overcharged  an 
art  is  the  more  caducous  it  proves,  like  the  architecture  of  the 
Jesuit  style,  which  is  to-day  so  ridiculous,  with  its  gilding  and 
false  ornaments.  Ceremonies,  properly  so  called,  will  be- 
come more  and  more  simple  in  religious  or  moral  associations  ; 
the  day  will  come,  no  doubt,  when  they  will  not  be  employed 
at  all  except  to  celebrate  the  three  great  events  of  human  life  : 
birth,  marriage,  and  death  ;  nay,  perhaps  they  will  disappear 
altogether  as  emotion  becomes  too  profound  to  be  trans- 
lated by  any  objective  device,  by  any  conventional  ceremony 
whatever. 

"  Une  larnie  en  dit  plus  que  vous  n'en  pourriez  dire." 


420  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

In  cemeteries  the  tombs  of  distinguished  people  may 
be  recognized  by  their  simplicity,  by  their  freedom  from 
conventional  ornament.  A  marble  slab  under  a  wreath  of 
flowers  is  enough  to  produce  upon  the  passer-by  a  more 
vivid  impression  than  crosses,  burning  lamps,  images  of 
the  saints,  infantine  gewgaws,  and  ridiculous  inscriptions. 
Eternal  enigmas  need  not  be  supplied  with  excess  of  lan- 
guage ;  they  are  quite  capable  of  making  themselves  heard 
without  raising  their  voices.  The  silence  of  the  stars  is 
more  impressive  than  speech,  and  the  highest  religious  instruc- 
tion could  not  do  better  than  teach  men  to  listen  to  such 
science.  Meditation,  which,  after  all,  is  recommended  by 
every  religion,  implies  the  negation  of  rite. 

III.  A  feeling  for  nature  was,  in  the  beginning,  an  impor- 
tant element  in  the  composition  of  the  religious  sentiment. 
Hindu  ascetics  went  up  into  the  valleys  of  the 
Enjoyment  of      Himalayas,  St.  Antoine  went  into  the  desert  at 

natural  beauty.  •'       '  ^, 

Thebes,  St.  Bruno  went  to  La  Grande  L.har- 
treuse,  in  search  of  something  more  than  simple  solitude  ; 
they  all  of  them  experienced  an  ill-defined  need  to  eke  out 
monotony  of  conterriplation  by  admiration  of  the  beautiful  in 
nature  ;  a  need  to  fill  the  void  of  ecstasy  with  harmonious  and 
powerful  sensations.  They  were  unconscious  poets,  painters 
without  hands,  astronomers  without  special  knowledge,  and 
their  sentiment  for  nature  made  part  of  their  religious  senti- 
ment;  the  profane  mingled  with  the  divine,  and  they  ascribed 
to  God  alone  the  intense  emotion  that  forest  and  mountain 
summit  had  given  rise  to  in  them.  To-day,  the  aesthetic 
sentiment  exists  apart  from  religious  sentiment  ;  although 
every  aesthetic  sentiment  of  an  especially  elevated  kind  is 
both  contemplative  and  philosophical,  it  contains  no  sugges- 
tion of  any  particular  religion:  no  tabernacle  can  roof  in 
heaven  ;  aesthetic  sentiment  is  foreign  to  the  definite  and 
anthropomorphic  notion  of  a  personal  God.  When  we 
contemplate  nature  we  have  no  sense  of  communion  with 
the  personality  of  God  ;  the  artist  has  definitively  sup- 
planted   the    religious  hermit.      The     power    of   theological 


ELEMENT  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  SOCIAL   LIFE.  421 

sentiment  has  weakened  ;   the  power  of  sympathy  for  nature 
has  increased. 

This  sense  of  natural  beauty,  which  is  so  strong  in  many 
men  at  the  present  day,  is  destined  to  a  much  greater  future. 
Like  aesthetic  faculties  generally,  a  sense  for  the 
ished  ""    beauty  of  nature  must  be  cultivated  and  devel- 

oped by  a  well-directed  education.  No  germ  of 
it  apparently  is  to  be  found  in  certain  cases  among  the 
peasantry,  where  a  mechanical  habit  of  life  has  dulled  the 
emotions,  nor  among  dwellers  in  cities,  in  whom  antago- 
nistic tastes  have  been  developed.  A  genuine  Parisian  cares 
little  for  the  country;  he  can  pass  an  hour  or  two  in  the 
fields,  as  he  might  in  the  Bois  de  Boulogne.  An  open-air 
landscape  would  not  so  readily  appeal  to  him  as  a  picture  of  it 
in  a  gold  frame ;  his  eye  is  not  educated  for  dealing  with  the 
dimensions  of  nature. 

Of  all   aesthetic    sentiments,   love  of  nature   possesses    the 

advantage  of  being  the   one  which,  even  though  pushed  to 

excess,  does  not  disturb  the  equilibrium  of  body 

The  most  whole-  and  mind.     Love  of  nature  is  the  sole  emotion 

enjoymenJ  which  is  absolutely  hygienic.     One  may  die  of  an 

exaggerated   love  of  the  theatre,   of  music  and 

so  forth ;  one    simply  becomes  healthy  from  an  exaggerated 

love  of  nature.     Air  and  light !     The  Greeks  were  right,  were 

they  not  ?   to  philosophize  in  the    open  air,  in  gardens   and 

groves.     A    ray  of   sunlight    sometimes   helps   one    more   to 

understand  the  world  than  an  eternity  of  meditation  in  some 

gray  room  in  the  midst  of  open  volumes.' 

'  Every  library  reading  room  ought  to  open  on  a  garden  where  one  could  read  and 
write  on  fine  days  in  the  open  air.  For  all  men  whose  labour  is  physical — for 
example,  for  a  factory  hand — the  proper  recreation  is  repose  in  the  open  air,  and,  if 
need  be,  intellectual  labour  in  the  open  air.  For  men  who  work  with  their  minds, 
the  proper  recreation  is  bodily  exercise  in  the  open  air,  in  the  sunlight.  For 
children  every  holiday  ought  to  be  spent  in  the  country.  Lighted  rooms,  chil- 
dren's entertainments  in  the  house  even  on  Sunday  afternoons,  theatrical  representa- 
tions, are,  hygienically  speaking,  absurdities.  All  boarding-schools,  moreover, 
ought  to  be  beyond  the  city  limits  and  if  possible  on  some  commanding  height. 
If  there  existed  in  France,  as  in  Germany  for  example,  great  colleges  in  country 
districts  hard  by  forests,  or  still  better,  in  the  highlands  of  Dauphiny  or  the 
Pyrenees,  such  places  would  ultimately  be  adopted  by  the  better  classes  for  their 


42  2  NON-RELIGION  OF   THE  FUTURE. 

Compare   the  appeal   that   nature  makes   to   the   aesthetic 

sense  with  that   made  by  human  art,  and  you  will  at  once 

perceive   the    superiority    of    the    former.      Art, 

Superior  to  en-    even  great  art,  even  that  which  seems  closest  to 

ioyment  of  human      ,  ,  ,  ,  .  -_ 

art.  the  truth,  can  never  be  more  than  a  very  msuffi- 

cient  representation  of  the  real  world,  because  it 
is  forced  to  a  selection  ;  it  is  forced  to  ignore  nine-tenths  of 
life  in  order  to  set  in  a  clear  light  what  is  extreme,  what 
appeals  to  laughter  or  to  tears.  Average  human  life  is  neither, 
ridiculous  nor  tragic  ;  life,  as  it  appears  in  art,  is  generally 
one  or  the  other.  The  reason  is  that  art  subordinates  truth 
to  interest,  while  life  is  truth.  Thence  results  the  movement 
toward  pessimism  in  art,  and  in  especial  in  modern  art  ;  the 
more  masterly  the  artist  is,  the  more  he  will  be  inclined 
to  seek  for  the  ridiculous  or  the  melancholy  aspects  of  life ; 
his  aim  is  to  move  pity  or  mirth,  and  existence  in  his  pages 
must  take  the  form  of  tragedy  or  comedy.  To  live  too  ex- 
clusively in  the  world  of  art  is  to  live  in  a  factitious  environ- 
ment as  if  one  should  pass  one's  whole  existence  in  a  theatre. 
The  most  beautiful  poem,  the  most  beautiful  work  of  art,  con- 
tains pitfalls  which  one  must  avoid.  The  imagination  usually 
plays  with  loaded  dice.  Whoever  lives  too  exclusively  on 
human  art  becomes,  therefore,  a  little  unhealthy,  a  little 
unbalanced.  The  great  source  of  aesthetic  appeal  is  and 
should  be  nature,  which  is  always  sincere,  always  shows  for 
what  it  is,  without  deception  and  ornament.  A  higher 
aesthetic  culture  will  increase  one's  sensibility  to  natural 
beauty,  and  it  is  in  a  contemplation  of  the  cosmos  that 
aesthetic  sentiment,  and  a  purified  religious  sentiment,  will 
find  it  possible  most  completely  to  coincide.  The  emotion 
that  arises  from  the  contemplation  of  a  landscape,  of  a  sunset, 
of  a  stretch  of  blue  sea,  of  a  snow-capped  mountain  outlined 
against  the  sky,  or  even  the  blue  dome  of  the  sky  itself,  is 
absolutely  pure,  sane,  neither  too  depressing,  nor  too  im- 
moderately gay.     In  the  presence   of   nature   one's  aesthetic 

children's  education,  and  thus  might  be  combated  the  degeneracy  of  the  middle 
class,  which  is  so  much  more  rapid  in  France  than  elsewhere,  because  the  custom 
of  restricting  the  number  of  children  interferes  with  natural  selection. 


ELEMENT  OF  RELIGIONS  IN  SOCIAL   LIFE.  423 

sensibilities  become  the  means  of  refreshing  and  resting  one 
instead  of  fatiguing  one — nature  smiles  but  never  grimaces ; 
and  its  smile  penetrates  the  soul  as  the  sunlight  penetrates 
the  eye  ;  and  if  nature  has  its  moods  of  sadness,  they  contain 
a  touch  of  the  infinite  which  enlarges  the  heart.  The  im- 
mensity of  nature  and  of  the  all-enveloping  heavens  becomes, 
for  those  who  feel  it,  a  constant  source  of  a  certain  stoical 
serenity. 


CHAPTER    III. 

THEISM. 

Review  of  the  Principal  Metaphysical  Hypotheses  which  will  Replace: 

Dogma. 

I.  Introduction — Progress  of  metaphysical  hypothesis — Meta- 
physical hypotheses  destined  to  increasing  diversity  in  details, 
and  increasing  agreement  on  essential  points — Importance  of  the 
moral  element  in  metaphysical  hypotheses — The  part  played  by 
conscience  in  human  morality  will  not  diminish,  as  Mr.  Spencer 
says— Sympathetic  groups  under  which  divers  systems  of  meta- 
physics will  be  ranged. 

II.  Theism— I.  Probable  fate  of  the  creation  hypothesis — The 
author  of  the  world  conceived  as  a  prime  mover — Eternity  of 
movement — The  author  of  the  world  conceived  as  a  creator 
properly  so  called — Illusion  involved  in  the  conception  of  nothing 
— Criticism  of  the  creation  hypothesis  from  the  point  of  view  of 
morals  :  the  problem  of  evil  and  of  the  responsibility  of  the  cre- 
ator—Attempts to  save  optimism — Hypothesis  of  a  God  creating 
free  agents,  "  workmen  "  and  not  "  work  " — Reciprocal  determi- 
nism and  the  illusion  of  spontaneity — Immorality  of  the  tempta- 
tion— Hypothesis  of  the  fall,  its  impossibility — God  the  tempter — 
Lucifer  and  God — 2.  Probable  fate  of  the  notion  of  Providence  — 
Hypotheses  to  explain  a  special  Providence  and  miracles  thus  in- 
sufficient— Hypothesis  of  a  non-omnipotent  God  proposed  by  John 
Stuart  Mill — The  God  of  Comtism — Religion  should  be  not 
solely  human  but  cosmic — The  fate  of  the  philosophical  idea  of 
God — Rational  religion  proposed  by  the  neo-Kantians — Ultimate 
transformation  of  the  notion  of  Divinity  and  of  Providence — 
Human  Providence  and  progressive  Divinity  in  the  world. 

/.  Introduction — Progress  of  metaphysical  hypothesis. 

To  say  that  humanity,  in  its  search  for  a  plausible  explana- 
tion of  the  world,  finds  itself  in  the  presence  of  a  great  number 
Trend  visibl        °^  hypotheses  among  which  it  must  choose  does 
in  metaphysical      not   mean  that   these   hypotheses   should  be    re- 
specu  a  ion.  garded  with  a  benevolent  neutrality,  that   they 

are  equivalent  in  the  eyes  of  reason.     Far  from  it :  we  believe 
that  metaphysical  hypotheses  already  are  following  a  certain 

424 


UNIVERSITY 
THEISM.  -"iiLCALlFORHlL 

general  direction  and  will  continue  to  do  so  in  the  future.     Our 

conception  of  the  unknown  will  become  precise  as  our  knowledge 

of  the  knowable  becomes  complete.      Even  morals,  which  vary 

so  markedly  from  country  to  country,  tend  to  approach  a  single 

type  and  to  become  identical  among  all  civilized  peoples.     The 

same  may  be  said  of  the  practical  part  of  all  religions.     Rites 

become   every  day   simpler,  and    dogmas   do   the   same,   and 

metaphysical  hypotheses  will  do  the  same.     By  the  progress 

of  human  thought,  the  avenues  that  lead  to  truth  will  be  better 

known.     We  regard  it  as  certain,  for  example,  that  all  effort 

will  be  abandoned,  if  it  has  not  been  abandoned  already,  to 

conceive  mankind's  ideal  as  embodied  in  the  jealous  and  evil 

God  of  the  Bible. 

The  angle  at  which  different  human  beings  look  out  upon 

the  ideal  will  continually  diminish  ;    and  as  the  angle  dimin- 

^^    ^      -  ishes,  the   power  of  vision  will  increase,  and  this 

Number  of  '  r  .      , 

metaphysical  unexpected  result  will  follow  :  that  metaphysical 
destiieHode-  hypotheses  concerning  the  world  and  its  destiny 
crease.  will  never    be    less   numerous    nor   less    varied, 

in  spite  of  the  increasing  convergence.     Human  thought  may 
even  become  more  personal,  more  original,  fuller  of  delicate 
distinctions,  and  at  the  same  time  less  inconsistent  as  one  passes 
from  mind    to    mind.     As   mankind    approximates  the  truth 
its  details  will  become  more  various,  and  the  beauty  of  the  whole 
more  marked.     An  approach  to  certitude  augments  the  dignity 
and  probability  of  the  possible  hypotheses  without  diminish- 
ing their  number.     Astronomy,  for  example,  has  increased  the 
sum   of  the  known   truths  about  celestial   bodies  and  at  the 
same  time  multiplied  the  number  of  possible  hypotheses  con- 
cerning them  ;    the  most  definite  knowledge  may  thus  be  the 
most  fertile  in  views  of  every  sort,  even  of  obscure  ones.      As 
the  human  mind  progresses  it  will  see   the  aspects  of  nature 
diversify  and  the  laws  of  nature    unify.      This  evening  from 
Sermione,  the  peninsula  dear  to  Catullus,  I  saw  on  the  surface 
of  Lago  di  Garda  the  reflection  of  as  many  stars  as  T  could  have 
seen  had  I  lifted  my  eyes  to  heaven.     Each  star  reflected  in 
the  lake  was  in  reality  nothing  but  a  brilliant  drop  of  water, 
close  to  my  hand  ;    each  of  the  stars  in   heaven  is  a  world 


426  NOX-RELIGION  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

separate  from  mc  by  an  infinite  reach  of  space  ;  the  stars  of 
heaven  and  of  the  lake  were,  however,  to  me  the  same. 
The  real  distance  of  things  and  the  depth  of  the  universe 
escape  the  human  eye.  But  science  corrects  the  eye, 
measures  distances  at  their  just  worth,  probes  ever  deeper  into 
the  vault  of  heaven,  distinguishing  objects  from  their  reflec- 
tions. Science  takes  account  at  once  of  the  place  of  the  ray 
in  the  water  and  of  its  origin  in  the  sky.  It  will  perhaps  one 
day  discover,  in  an  infinitely  magnified  expanse  of  thought, 
the  primitive  and  central  spring  of  light  which  as  yet  com- 
municates with  us  only  by  reflection  and  broken  rays  and 
flying  scintillations  from  some  unstable  mirror. 

Since  the  Stoics  and   Kant,  metaphysical  hypotheses  have 
come  to  be  regarded   from  a  new  point  of  view.     What  to- 
day has  come    to   be    the    great  charm  of  such 

Moralism.         ,  ,  .       ,  ,  ,  11  1 

hypotheses  is  that  they  endeavour  to  lend  a  moral 

significance  to  the  world,  to  impress  upon  the  course  of  uni- 
versal evolution  a  direction  conformable  to  that  of  our  con- 
science as  affectionate  and  sociable  beings.  The  future  history 
of  religion  may  be  summed  up  in  this  law:  that  religious 
dogmas,  transformed  at  first  into  simple  metaphysical  conjec- 
tures, reduced  later  to  a  certain  number  of  definite  hypotheses, 
among  which  the  individual  made  his  choice  on  increasingly 
rational  grounds,  ultimately  came  to  bear  principally  on  the 
problem  of  morals.  Religious  metaphysics,  in  effect,  will 
result  in  a  transcendental  theory  of  universality,  an  ideal 
sociology  embracing  in  its  sweep  all  the  beings  that  constitute 
the  universe ;  and  this  sociology  will  be  founded,  not  upon 
physical  inductions,  like  that  of  the  earliest  religions,  nor 
upon  ontological  inductions  like  that  of  the  first  system  of 
metaphysics,  but  upon  the  moral  conscience  of  mankind. 
Animism,  theism,  pantheism,  are  destined  to  fall  under  the 
domination  of  what  may  be  called  moralism. 

Such  diverse  solutions  as  may  be  given  of  the  moral  prob- 
lem thus  understood  will  always  interest  mankind,  but  they 
will  occupy  a  smaller  and  smaller  place  in  its  practical  life  ; 
they  will  lose  the  extraordinary  influence  that  religions  have 


THEISM.  427 

often  possessed  over  the  conduct   of  men.     As  society  pro- 
gresses the  moral  agent  will  find  less  and  less  need  to  appeal 
for  support  in  the  conduct  of  life  to  metaphysical 

Increasing  ^^  .  .  d       • 

interest  in  hypothcscs   and    systematic    uncertamty.      rosi- 

moraiism  ^j^^  morality  will  more  and  more  completely  suf- 

fice for  the  ordinary  exigencies  of  life.  Generosity  of  heart 
will  be  less  dependent  on  the  intelligence  for  its  adventurous 
impulses;  it  will  produce  them  unassisted.  Metaphysical 
speculations  will  tend  to  become,  like  the  highest  aesthetic 
products,  a  luxury;  they  will  be  sought  for  their  own  sakes, 
and  for  the  general  elevation  of  mind  that  they  bestow, 
rather  than  for  guidance  in  particular  matters  of  con- 
duct. The  destiny  of  the  world  will  interest  us  quite  apart 
from  any  question  of  our  own  destiny,  and  our  voyages  into 
the  unknown  will  be  prompted  not  by  selfishness  but  by  dis- 
interested curiosity. 

We  do  not  believe,  however,  with  Mr.  Spencer  that  the  part  to 

be  played  by  the  reflective  conscience  in  human  life  is  destined 

to  diminish,  nor  that  man  will  come  to  do  what 

And  in  reflective   j^  j.-  ^^.  jj^  obedience  to  a  blind  instinct— to  rush 

rectitude.  ° 

into  the  fire  or  throw  himself  into  the  water  to 
save  the  life  of  a  fellow-creature  almost  as  irreflectively  as  he 
would  lift  his  hat  to  a  friend  in  the  street.  On  the  contrary, 
man  will  become  more  and  more  reflective  and  philosophical 
in  all  things,  and  among  others,  in  regard  to  the  directing 
principles  of  his  conduct.  And  there  is  no  room  in  all  this  for 
the  belief  that  the  dissolving  influence  exercised  by  reflection 
upon  primitive  instincts  will  seriously  hinder  the  growth  of  the 
social  instinct.  Intelligence  paralyzes  instincts  only  when  it 
is  obliged  to  oppose  them,  when  it  does  not  justify  them,  when 
it  aims  really  at  displacing  them."  But  speculative  thought 
will  always  justify  social  instinct,  even  considered  purely  from 
the  scientific  and  positive  point  of  view.  As  we  have  shown, 
the  most  extraordinary  manifestation  of  the  social  instinct, 
devotion,  belongs  to  the  general  law  of  life,  and  does  not  in 
the  least  possess  the  abnormal  character  that  has  sometimes 

'  See  upon  this  point  the  author's  Probllmes  d'estUtique,  p.  139  {De  Vantago- 
nisme  entre  Vesprit  scientifique  et  I'instinct.) 


42  8  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

been  attributed  to  it;  to  run  a  risk  for  someone  else  is  not  to 
be  purely  unselfish,  for  one  is  attracted  by  the  sublimity  of 
danger  and  of  risk,  and  a  capacity  for  this  attraction  has  been 
developed  and  rendered  powerful  by  natural  selection  in  the 
higher  species  of  the  animal  kingdom  ;  the  desire  to  expose 
one's  self  is  almost  normal  in  a  morally  well-constituted  individ- 
ual. In  morals  as  in  aesthetics  sublimity  is  allied  to  beauty.'  The 
speculative  instinct  will,  therefore,  not  counteract  the  social 
instinct;  it  will  rather  fortify  it,  and  human  disinterestedness 
generally,  for  speculation  itself  is  the  most  disinterested  act  of 
the  mental  life.  Generally  speaking,  reflective  conscience  is 
always  more  disinterested  than  irreflective  action,  which  is 
typified  in  reflex  action ;  it  is  less  directly  useful  to  life  on  its 
simplest  terms.  Parallel  to  the  development  of  conscience 
and  of  speculative  intelligence  there  goes  always  a  develop- 
ment of  our  moral  activity.  The  more  truly  intelligent  a 
human  being  is  the  more  active  he  is ;  and  the  more  active  he 
is,  the  less  self-sufficing  he  becomes,  the  greater  his  need  to 
live  for  someone  else.  Antisocial  beings  are  almost  always 
mentally  and  physically  dawdlers,  who  are  incapable  of  con- 
tinuous mental  or  physical  labour.  Activity  of  mind  must 
inevitably,  therefore,  indirectly  fortify  the  moral  instincts. 
Sociality  is  developed  by  thought. 

Although  by  the  progress  of  analysis  the  complication  of 

the  great  mental  and  moral  hypotheses  must  increase,  it   is 

possible,  even  at  the  present  day,  to  foresee  the 

Possible  to         main  synthetic  groups  under   which  the  several 

classify  the  di-  -'  . 

verse  systems  of     systems  will  be  classifiable. 

^''^^"'  This  book  is  not  a  treatise  on  metaphysics  :  an 

exposition  and  criticism  of  these  systems  will  not,  therefore, 
here  be   expected  ;    but   their  characteristic   spirit,  which   has 

also  been  the  spirit  of  the  great  religions,  is  of 
in!rcWst'emr   interest  to  us  here,  and,  for  us,  constitutes  their 

value.  It  is  this  spirit  which  is  at  once  specula- 
tive and  religious,  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word,  that  it  is 
important,  accordingly,  to  elicit,  and  that  wholly  without  dog- 
matical  or  polemical  aim  of   any  kind.     Absolute  sincerity, 

'  Esquisse  (Tune  morale  sans  obligation,  p.  215. 


THEISM.  429 

impersonal   and  passionate   sincerity,   is  the  first  duty  of  the 
philosopher.     To  arrange    the  world  according  to  one's  per- 
sonal preferences,  to  be  on  the  lookout,  not  for  the  most  prob- 
able, but  for  the  most  consoling  hypotheses,  is  to  resemble  a 
merchant    who    should    count    his    credits    only  when    he    is 
making  up  his   books  and    should   indulge  in  none  but  con- 
soling additions.     The  strictest  probity  is  demanded  of  him 
who  balances  the  great  book  of  life  ;  the  philosopher  should 
hide  nothing  either   from    others  or  from   himself.     We  shall 
endeavour,  therefore,  to   set  forth,  what  are  in  our  judgment 
the  diverse  aspects  under  which   the  knowable  as  a  whole, 
and   therefore    also    the    unknowable,    or    if    you    prefer,    the 
great    unknown,    present    themselves   to-day.     We    shall    en- 
deavour to  interpret    the    great    metaphysical    systems    sym- 
pathetically,   without,    however,    any    illusions    in    regard    to 
their  incompleteness  and  their  errors.     In  a  certain  church  in 
Verona   sacred   texts    are    inscribed   on    the    marble    slabs   of 
which   the  floor  is  composed  ;    they  interpret  and  complete 
each  other,  and,  however  obscure  at   first,  gradually  become 
plain  as  one  advances  under  the  high  arched  roof  ;  thus  it  is 
in  life  :  the  religious  and  philosophical  beliefs  in  the  midst  of 
which  we  live  seem  to  us  at  first  enigmatical  and  mysterious, 
we  trample    them    under  foot   without    understanding  them  ; 
but,  as  we  advance,  we  discover  their  hidden  meaning,  their 
naivete,  and  their  profoundity.     At  every  step  in  life  a  new 
perspective  into  the  heart  of  humanity  is  thrown  open  to  us; 
to  live  is  to   understand,   and   to   understand   is   not   only  to 
tolerate  but  to  love.     Such  love,  however,  is  not  incompatible 
with  clearness  of  vision,  nor  with  an  effort  to  transform  and 
ameliorate    the    beloved    object ;    on    the    contrary,    a    really 
active  love  ought  to  be,  more  than  all  else,  a  desire  for  trans- 
formation and  for  progress.     To  love  a  being  or  a  belief  is  to 
seek  to  make  it  better. 

//.    Theism. 

The  majority  of  people  scarcely  see  any  possible  alternative 
to  such  and  such  a  determinate  religion  except  atheism. 
The    fact    is,  of   course,  quite   otherwise.     Religious   thought 


43°  NOX-RELIGION  OF   THE  FUTURE. 

manifests  itself  in  a  hundred  forms;  why  should  free-thought 
be  restricted  to  a  single  conception  of  the  universe?  I  have 
known  a  multitude  of  free-thinkers  who  believed 
lig^radStkot"'  "^°^^  sincerely  in  the  existence  of  God,  in  the 
immortality  of  the  soul,  and,  in  general,  in  spirit- 
ual principles  than  a  great  many  professed  worshippers. 
Were  they  right  to  do  so  ?  Was  Voltaire,  for  example, 
who  based  his  affirmation  of  the  existence  of  God  upon  the 
splendour  of  a  sunrise,  somewhat  naive,  and  inclined  to  mis- 
take an  emotion  for  a  bit  of  proof?  It  makes  little  difference  ; 
what  we  wish  to  set  in  relief  is  that  faith  in  a  priest  is  not 
necessarily  part  and  parcel  of  faith  in  a  God,  and  that  the 
disappearance  of  the  former  may  lend  an  increase  of  power 
and  of  refinement  to  the  latter.  No  single  philosophic  doc- 
trine is  to  be  regarded  as  standing  alone  in  opposition  to  the 
whole  body  of  religions  ;  religions  and  philosophies  together 
are  all  philosophic  doctrines,  all  hypotheses,  and  none  of 
them  above  discussion.  We  say  to  the  individual :  "  Weigh 
and  choose."  And  among  these  hypotheses  we  include  that 
of  which  modern  religions  constitute  the  symbolic  expression, 
theism.  If  the  religious  anomy  which  we  regard  as  the  ideal 
implies  the  suppression  of  everything  in  the  nature  of  an 
external  revelation,  it  does  not  on  that  account  exclude  a 
subjective  and  personal  intuition  of  divinity.  Even  mystics  may 
find  their  account  in  the  religious  individualism  of  the  future. 
Intuition,  however,  in  metaphysics  as  in  morals,  is  every  day 
losing  ground.  The  progress  of  ideas  will  result  in  the 
gradual  triumph  of  scientific  induction  over  alleged  natural 
intuition,  of  probability  over  faith.  Subjective  revelation  will 
disappear  as  objective  revelation  is  doing,  and  give  place  by 
degrees  to  reasoning.  Dogmatic  theism,  like  all  dogma,  is 
doomed  ;  but  what  is  purest  in  the  theistic  spirit  may  survive. 
I.  Let  us  first  consider  the  probable  fate  of  the  dogma  of 
the  Creator,  which  belongs  to  the  great  Jewish,  Christian,  and 
Islamite  religions.  Science  follows  the  law  of  parsimony ; 
nature  economizes  force,  science  economizes  ideas.  The  first 
economy  to  be  undertaken  might  well  relate  precisely  to  the 
idea  of  the  creation.     The  author  of  the  world  may  be  con- 


THEISM.  431 


ceived  as  the  universal  motor.  But  the  conception  of  cause 
as  a  source  of  movement,  or  as  a  prime  motor,  is  full  of 
God  conceived  Contradictions  and  is  becoming  more  and  more 
as  prime  mover  foreign  to  modern  philosophy.  For  the  concep- 
acSing^to  tion  of  a  first  cause  implies  a  pre-existing  state 

modern  physics,      ^f  repose,  and   repose   is  no   more  primitive  and 
absolute  than  nothingness.     Nothing  is  in  repose,  nothing  has 
ever  been  in  repose.     The  most  motionless  atom  in  the  atmos- 
phere describes  in  its  vibration,  according  to   Clausius,  four 
hundred  and  forty-seven  metres  a  second  in  a  space  of  ninety- 
five  millionths  of  a  millimetre  ;  it  receives  during  this  time  four 
billion  seven  hundred  million  shocks.      The  vibrating  atom  of 
hydrogen  describes  one   thousand   eight   hundred  and  eighty- 
four  metres  in  a  second.     Repose  is  an   illusion  of  the  human 
mind,  and  the  conception  of  a  divine   first  mover  is  a  second 
illusion  based  on  the  first.     The  eternal  movement  that  stirred 
the  molecules  of  the  primitive  substance,  later  grouped  them 
into  spheres,  and   the  spheres  began  whirling  of  their  own 
accord  in  the  ether  without   need  of  a  preliminary  push  from 
the  sacred  beetle  (as  the  Egyptian  legend  has  it)  that  rolls  his 
sacred  ball,  which  is   the   image    of  the   universe.     Where,  as 
Strauss   remarked,    Newton    felt    called    upon    to    assume    a 
"divine  first  impulse,"  and  Buffon  was  obliged  to  resort  to  the 
hypothesis  of  a  comet  colliding  with  the  primitive  sphere  and 
breaking  it  up  into  the   fragments  which  now  constitute  the 
earth  and  the  planets,  we  need  invoke  nothing  but  the  fixity 
of  natural  laws.     Since  Kant,  Descartes,  and  Laplace,  we  pos- 
sess an  approximate  explanation  of  the  formation  of  the  stars, 
which  are  alternately   produced   and   dissolved  by  the  concen- 
tration   and    resolution    of  material  masses — are    born   to   be 
"  devoured,"  as  Kant  said,  in  the  abyss  of   eternity.     One  and 
the  same  cause,  resistance  of  the  ether,  explains  the  agglomera- 
tion of  nebulous  matter  into  nuclei,  and  the  slowing  down  of 
the  motion  of  the  spheres  thus  formed,  and  the   ultimate  fall 
of  these  spheres  upon  some  neighbouring  centre  of  attraction 
and  the  resulting  dispersion  into  nebulae. 

More  than  that,  by  the  progress  of   physiology   and  natural 
history,  the  organic  and  the  inorganic  worlds  have  come  to  be 


432  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

conceived  as  so  closely  related   that  a  true  explanation  of  the 
first  would  probably  include  a  true  explanation  of  the  second. 
The  chasm   that  once  existed   between   life  and 
And  with  \v\\2,t  sustains  life  has  been  closed.     If  our  labora- 

p  ysioogy.  tories  do  not  enable  us  to  catch  spontaneous  gen- 

eration in  the  act,  the  reason  is  simply  that  their  resources  are 
not  equal  to  those  of  nature,  that  they  have  not  the  same 
means  at  their  disposal,  that  the  so-called  primitive  beings 
that  we  endeavour  to  produce  in  the  laboratory  are  really  not 
primitive.  Men  of  science  who  have  attempted  such  experi- 
ments resemble  the  followers  of  Darwin  who  have  tried  to 
transform  an  anthropoid  ape  into  a  human  being.  Nature 
permits  of  an  infinite  convergence  of  forces  upon  a  deter- 
minate point,  that  cannot  be  realized  in  a  laboratory.  More 
than  that,  time,  which  we  are  always  inclined  to  neglect,  is  a 
necessary  factor  in  the  evolution  of  things;  what  is  natural  is 
slow.  To  find  the  earliest  stages  of  organic  life,  as  to  find  the 
early  stages  in  the  formation  of  a  star,  we  must  go  far  back 
into  the  remote  past. 

If  there  is  no  necessity  for  the  conception  of  God  as  a  prime 
mover,  is  there  any  necessity  for  the  conception  of  God  as  the 
Creator  of  the  universe  ?     A  creative  cause  seems 
as^trtof '^      to  the  modern  mind  less  and  less  needed  for  the 
worse  than  explanation   of  the  world,  for  the  fact  of  exist- 

super  uous.  ^^^^    Stands  in  no   need   of  explanation  ;    what 

rather  needs  explanation  is  non-existence.  Death,  repose, 
are  all  relative  and  derived.  Death  implies  life,  and  is  itself 
only  a  provisional  stage,  an  interval  between  two  metamor- 
phoses. There  exists  no  piinctuni  mortiimn,  no  one  really  dead 
point  in  the  universe.  It  is  by  a  pure  artifice  of  thought  that 
religions  have  conceived  the  universe  as  beginning  in  annihi- 
lation, in  death  (which  is  a  remote  consequence  of  life),  in 
order  to  afford  an  opportunity  for  the  intervention  of  a  crea- 
tive power:  creation  is  a  resurrection  following  on  a  fictitious 
death. 

The  real  state  of  the  case  is  not  that  existence  springs  from 
non-existence,  but  that  non-existence  is  a  simple  aspect  of  ex- 
istence, or  rather  an  illusion  of  thought.     The  notion  of  crea- 


THEISM.  433 

tion    will   be    more  and    more   widely    displaced    by    that  of 

evolution  and  variation.     Different  worlds  are  eternal  varia- 

„  , .  tions  on  the  same  theme,  the  tat  tvani  asi  of  the 

Notningness  an 
aspect  of  exist-       Hindus  tends  to  become  a  scientific  variety.     A 

^'°-'^^'  substantial  unity  of  the  world  and  the  solidarity 

of  all  the  beings  in  the  world  will,  undoubtedly,  be  more  and 
more  clearly  demonstrated. 

The  creation  may  be  considered,  since  Kant's  time,  as  a 
demonstrably  indemonstrable  and  even  inconceivable  hypoth- 
esis; but  Kant  did  not  stay  to  inquire  whether 
fofeJir^"""''^^'  the  Biblical  dogma  of  the  creation  will  not  tend 
to  appear  to  us  increasingly  immoral ;  a  tendency 
which,  according  to  Kant's  principles,  would  suf^ce  to  cause  it  to 
be  rejected  in  the  future.  A  doubt,  which  some  thinkers  of 
antiquity  felt  keenly,  has  come  to  be  widely  diffused  in  our 
days ;  a  Creator  is  a  being  in  whom  all  things  find  their  reason 
and  their  cause,  and  who,  consequently,  is  ultimately  respon- 
sible for  everything.  He  is  responsible  for  all  the  evil  in  the 
universe.  As  the  idea  of  infinite  power,  of  supreme  liberty  of 
action  became  inseparable  from  the  conception  of  God,  God 
was  deprived  of  every  excuse,  for  the  Absolute  is  dependent 
upon  nothing.  Everything,  on  the  contrary,  depends  on  Him 
and  finds  its  reason  in  Him.  In  the  last  resort  He  alone  is 
culpable  ;  His  work,  in  the  manifold  series  of  its  effects,  presents 
itself  to  modern  thought  as  one  sole  action,  and  this  action, 
like  any  other,  is  capable  of  being  sat  upon  in  moral  judgment ; 
the  author  is  to  be  judged  by  his  work,  the  world  passes  judg- 
ment on  God.  Well,  as  evil  and  immorality  in  the  universe, 
with  the  progress  of  the  moral  sense,  become  more  shocking,  it 
seems  that  to  admit  the  creation  hypothesis  is  to  centralize, 
to  concentrate,  all  the  immorality  of  the  world  in  one  being, 
and  to  justify  the  paradox  :  "  God  is  evil."  To  admit  the 
doctrine  of  a  Creator  is,  in  a  word,  to  banish  evil  from  the 
world  to  God,  its  primordial  source ;  to  absolve  men  and 
the  universe  and  accuse  the  author  of  both. 

There  is  something  still  worse  than  referring  the  source  of 
all  evil  thus  to  a  creative  will,  and  that  is,  for  the  purpose  of 
exculpating  the  Creator,  to  deny  the  evil  itself,  and  to  declare 


434  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

that  this  world  is  the  best  of  all    possible   worlds.     Such  is 

the  choice  that  Leibnitz  and  the  theologians  made.    Religions 
are    obliged   to   apologize    for    the    universe,    to 

thfeistncey   profess  an  admiration  for  the  divine  plan  ;  they 

evil  to  exculpate     \^q\,\  in  reserve  excuses  for  the  existence  of  injus- 
tice, and  labour  unconsciously  to  falsify  the  moral 

sense,  in  order  to  relieve  God  of  his  responsibility. 

Many   hypotheses   have    been    devised    in    the    service    of 

optimism  to  excuse  the  Creator,  without    compromising  the 
Doctrine  that      moral  sense,  and  mankind's  instinct  for  progress. 

physical  or  Intel-    Physical    evil    (suffering),   intellectual  evil  (error 

lectual  evil  are  .,,n,  t  ii         j^i.  jv„ 

conditions  of  and  doubt),  have  been  declared  to  be  a  condition 
well-being.  ^/^^  ^^^^  ^^;^  q{  moral  good  ;    which  would  justify 

them.  Moral  evil  would  thus  remain  the  sole  verifiable  evil 
in  the  universe,  and  as  moral  evil  consists  simply  in  evil  inten- 
tions on  the  part  of  men,  men  alone,  on  this  hypothesis,  would 
be  responsible.  The  universe  itself,  that  is  to  say,  would  contain 
no  evil  except  in  the  person  of  the  man  who  is  purposely  evil 
by  his  own  free  choice,  and  the  possibility  of  moral  evil  might 
be  considered  as  a  supreme  condition  of  moral  goodness,  the 
latter  presupposing  freedom  of  choice,  a  selection  by  the 
will,  and  an  alternative  to  be  refused.  The  evil  in  the  universe 
would  thus  be  compensated  for  by  morality,  suffering  would 
be  compensated  for  by  virtue,  mistakes  by  good  will.  The 
world  itself  would  be  simply  a  means  of  producing  morality 
and,  in  its  apparent  imperfection,  it  would  be  the  best  world 
possible,  because  its  apparent  imperfection  would  be  necessary 
to  produce  what  is  best  in  it. 

The  world,  it  has  been  said,  cannot  be  in  every  respect 
absolute,  for  it  would  then  be  God  ;  it  must  always  be  in  the 
position  of  a  recipient ;  the  less  it  receives — the 
thrSfgiTylnL  more  it  acts  in  independence  of  external  aid, 
world  lies  in  its  ^he  more  it  develops  from  within,  and  the  more 
spontaneity.  .^  approaches  the  Absolute,  insomuch  that  the 

very  poverty  of  the  earth  constitutes  its  grandeur,  since  it  is 
the  condition  of  its  real  wealth,  a  wealth  not  borrowed  from 
another  but  acquired  by  its  own  effort.  Everything,  there- 
fore, becomes  transfigured  according  to  this  hypothesis,  every 


THEISM.  435 

suffering  becomes  a  merit ;  God  wished  to  create  the  most 
spontaneous  world  possible,  that  is  to  say  at  bottom  to  create 
as  little  as  possible,  to  leave  as  large  an  initiative  as  possible 
to  his  creatures.  Laissez  /aire  is  God's  device,  as  it  is  the 
tlevice  of  all  good  government.  A  small  result,  but  obtained 
by  spontaneity,  is  superior  to  a  greater  result  obtained  by 
mechanical  artifice.  "  Divine  art,"  says  a  philosopher,  in  com- 
menting on  some  doctrines  of  Plato,  "is  infinitely  superior  to 
human  art  ;  it  creates  individuals  who  are  ends  unto  themselves 
and  self-evolved.  These  individuals  are  not,  as  Leibnitz  be- 
lieved, automata  .  .  .  true  perfection  is  autonomous.  If  God 
is  only  a  demiurge,  he  may  be  accused,  and  ought  to  be 
accused,  of  being  a  bad  workman.  Is  the  world  not  full  of 
unsuccessful  attempts,  of  unfortunate  combinations,  of  ends 
either  missed  altogether  or  ill  achieved?  The  critics  of  Provi- 
dence will  always  have  enough  to  say,  but  these  unfinished 
sketches  are  the  work  not  of  God  but  of  his  creatures,  of  the 
forces  and  individual  souls  that  he  has  set  in  operation.  In  a 
word  God  is  not  a  workman  who  produces  works,  but  a  work- 
man who  creates  workmen."'  This  formula  sums  up  in  a  striking 
manner  what  may  be  called  transfigured  optimism.  The  new 
hypothesis  does  not  deny  evil,  but,  on  the  contrary,  hastens 
to  admit  it ;  but  by  converting  evil  into  a  consequence  of 
spontaneity,  it  subordinates  it  to  good  itself,  makes  it  labour 
in  the  service  of  its  opposite ;  the  most  fragmentary  sketch 
becomes  respectable  when  it  is  a  step,  and  a  necessary  step, 
toward  a  masterpiece. 

The  hypothesis  in  question   is  certainly  one  which,  within 

the  realm  of  theism,  may  well  continue  to  be  long  the  most 

plausible.       It    crives    rise,    however,    to    a    great 

fA     'x'      'A 

many  difficulties.  In  the  first  place  it  assumes 
the  superiority  of  what  is  spontaneous  to  what  is  not ;  of  what, 
so  to  speak,  does  itself,  as  compared  with  what  is  done.  Be  it  so, 
but  in  what  respect  can  beings  in  this  world  be  said  to  lead  a 
spontaneous  existence  ;  in  what  respect  can  I  be  said  to  lead 
a  spontaneous  existence  ?     Am  I  not  the  result  of  a  multitude 

'  A.   Fouillee.   Philosophie  de    Platon,   t.    ii.   p.  639.       See  also   M.   Secretan, 
Philosophic  de  la  liberti,  and  Vallier,  L' Intention  morale. 


436  NON-KELIGION   OF    THE   FUTURE. 

of  causes  ?  1  was  born  and  am  maintained  by  the  consilience 
of  a  multitude  of  little  cellular  or  atomic  volitions.  Should  I 
be  less  than  I  am  if  I  were  the  result  of  a  single  volition,  and 
that  a  divine  volition  ?  Over  and  above  myself  there  always 
exist  my  antecedents,  the  causes  of  me ;  my  true  cause  does 
not  lie  within  the  limits  of  myself :  what  difference  does  it 
make  to  me,  therefore,  whether  those  causes  lie  within  the 
universe  or  beyond  ?  Whether  the  world  is  the  more  or  less 
harmonious  work  of  a  multitude  of  blind  spontaneities  or  the 
work  of  a  single  intelligent  will,  neither  diminishes  nor 
increases  the  value  of  any  given  individual  that  is  the  product 
of  the  world.  My  ancestors  are  indifferent  to  me  the  instant 
I  become  dependent  upon  ancestors  at  all.  Should  the  statue 
of  Pygmalion  reproach  the  sculptor  with  having  made  it 
beautiful,  and  having  made  it  with  his  own  hands,  and  defini- 
tively fashioned  it  for  life  ?  Providing  it  lives  and  is  happy, 
it  matters  little  whence  its  life  comes.  Obscurity  lies  behind, 
lio-ht  and  life  lie  before,  and  it  is  forward  that  one's  face  is  set. 
In  the  new  Platonic  hypothesis,  transfigured  as  above,  the 
organization  of  the  individual  always  becomes,  in  the  last 
resort,  the  work  of  a  reciprocal  determinism. 
Results  mde-     According- to  the  ordinary  hypothesis,  it  is  the 

termmism  °  j        j  y 

work  of  a  single,  absolute,  determining  will;  but 
the  absolute  or  relative  character  of  the  determining  prin- 
ciple in  nowise  affects  the  nature  of  what  is  determined.  The 
actual  world  is  no  more  passive,  if  it  is  produced  directly 
by  the  operation  of  the  first  cause,  than  if  it  is  produced 
indirectly  by  the  intermediation  of  a  multitude  of  derivative 
causes,  even  if  these  causes  present  individually  the  char- 
acter of  spontaneity.  After  all,  since  the  individual  must 
always  be  solidary,  solidarity  between  it  and  divine  perfection 
is  preferable  to  solidarity  with  derivative  imperfection. 

There  is,  however,  in  the  Platonic  and  Aristotelian  notion 
of  spontaneity  an  element  of  profundity  and  of  verisimilitude, 
but  it  leads  precisely  to  the  refutation  of  the  doctrine  of 
creation :  once  carry  the  hypothesis  of  the  spontaneity  of 
existence  to  its  ultimate  conclusion,  and  the  original  fund  of 
existence  must  be  impoverished  until  nothing  but  nude   un- 


THEISM.  .  437 

qualifiable   substance  be  left;  but  that  is  to  say,  one  must  go 

back  to  Aristotle's  pure  force,  to  Hegel's  pure  being,  which 

is  identical  with  not  being ;  the  masterpiece  of 

And  contradicts  spontaneity  would  be  self-creation.     The  instant 

itself. 

such  a  spontaneity  is  possible  God  is  a  super- 
fluity ;  it  is  easier  to  say  that  becoming  arose  out  of  the  iden- 
tity of  being  and  not  being,  or  rather  that  becoming  is  eternal 
on  its  own  account.  Becoming  thus  becomes  God  and 
theism  becomes  atheism  or  pantheism. 

To  sum  up,  the  Creator  unable  to  create  bare,  virtual 
substance,    must   have    created    beings    endowed    with    some 

real  quality ;  but,  if  so,  they  are  once  for  all 
immary.  ^^.^  works  and  not  simply  independent  work- 
men. More  than  that,  such  a  substance  with  such  qualities 
once  created,  such  and  such  effects  necessarily  follow  ;  qual- 
ities are  determinations  which  determine  subsequent  deter- 
minations in  their  turn.  Behold  therefore  the  present,  big 
with  the  future.  The  world  becomes  a  determined  succes- 
sion of  "works"  which  develop  fatally  from  their  earliest 
stage. 

M.  Secretan  will  tell  us  that  God  simply  created  free  wills 
but  not  substances  ;  but  it  must  be  confessed  that  these  free 

wills  have  been  immersed  in  a  deterministic  uni- 
Doctrinethat  i  •    i     i  i  i-     i      i-i  r 

God  has  created     verse  which  leaves  them  little  liberty  ot  action. 

beings  free  to         Why,  therefore,  did  He  not  create  us  freer  and 
choose  criticised, 

still  freer  and  as  free  as  Himself  ?     But  we  should 

have  been  gods,  it  is  objected : — so  much  the  better,  might 

be  replied  ;  there  could  not  be  too  many  gods ;  we  do  not  see 

why  God  should  have   reduced  himself  to  a  unity,  "  as  if  the 

laws  of  number  constituted   a  limitation  of  His  power."  '     It 

does  not  appear  why  the  Creator  should  be  unable  to  create 

a  double  of  Himself;  why  He  should  be  obliged  to  hand  on 

the  divine  life,  that  He  wishes  to  share,  on  lower   terms  only; 

we   do    not    see   why   God's    productivity   should    involve    a 

certain  degeneration. 

'  M.  Fouillee  has  effectively  stated  this  in  his  Sysilmes  de  morale  contemporains, 
where  he  in  some  measure  attacks  the  hypothesis  that  he  had  incidentally  proposed 
in  his  commentary  on  Plato. 


438  NON-RELIGION  OF   THE  FUTURE. 

In  any  event,  in  default  of  other  attributes,  we  ought  to  be 

given    the   maximum    of  possible  liberty;  admitting  that  we 

could  not  be  created  free  and  equal  to  God,  our 

Amaiimnm        liberty    should  differ  from    His  by  a  minimum. 

of  liberty.  ■'  ■' 

This  minimum,  being  susceptible  of  infinite  dimi- 
nution, might  become  less  than  any  conceivable  difference  ; 
it  might  become,  that  is  to  say,  infinitely  little,  practically 
zero ;  but  we  are  far  from  any  such  exalted  station,  and  if  God 
gave  us  liberty  He  was  very  miserly  about  it. 

To  say  the  truth,  it  is  only  by  an  abuse  of  language  that  any 
such  ideal  liberty  is  ascribed  to  us  as  is  attributed  to  God,  and 

.     ,       ,        regarded  as  of  infinite  value.     The  freedom  that 

An  aouse  of  °  •      <•         i  r      i  •  1 1 

language  to  call     religion    ascribes   to   us  is  freedom  of   the  will, 
^^^®®'  power  to  do  evil  or  good,  a  power  the  very  conse- 

quence of  which  is  irreconcilable  with  the  notion  of  God. 
Without  entering  upon  a  consideration  of  what  such  a  power 
would  be  and  of  its  moral  worth,  why  does  our  free-will  exist  in 
the  midst  of  conditions  so  unfavourable  to  it,  so  calculated  to 
render  it  ineffective  ?  The  sole  response  is  the  classic  theory 
of  the  temptation.  The  temptation,  as  an  explanation  of 
the  world,  practically  involves  the  hypothesis  of  a  father  expos- 
ing his  children,  as  a  means  of  testing  their  virtue,  to  temptations 
of  vice  and  crime,  and  knowing  beforehand  that  they  will 
succumb.  Morally,  the  conception  is  simply  inadmissible  ;  is 
worthy  of  the  distant  times  when  hearts  were  harder  than 
they  are  to-day.  More  than  that,  the  only  beings  that  could 
in  any  proper  sense  be  put  to  the  proof  are  truly  conscientious 
beings,  for  they  alone  are  capable  of  entertaining  a  moral 
alternative.  A  reflective  conscience  is  so  rare  in  the  world  ! 
By  virtue  of  what  temptation  resisted  are  minerals  and  vege- 
tables permitted  to  exist  in  unconsciousness  and  sleep,  while 
animals  are  torn  by  the  miseries  of  life  and  death  without 
being  able  to  convert  their  sufferings  into  a  confirmation  of 
the  moral  will  or  amelioration  of  their  lot? 

The  supreme  resource  of  Christianity  and  of  religions  gen- 
erally is  the  doctrine  of  the  fall,  but  this  explanation  of  evil  as 
the  result  of  a  primitive  imperfection  is  an  explanation  of  evil 
by  evil.     The  fall  must  have  been  preceded  by  some  defect  in 


THEISM.  439 

the  will  itself,  or  the  will  would  not  have  failed.     Original  sin 

is  not  an  ultimate;  one  does  not  stumble  if  there  is  no  obstacle 

in  the  way,  and  one's  legs  are  well  made,  and  one 

Doctrine  of         jg  walking  in  the  eye  of  the  Lord.     Sin   involves 
the  fall.  .*^  ,      ,  ,  •  r      , 

temptation,  and  the  doctrine  of  the  temptation 
necessarily  implies  that  God  was  the  first  tempter;  morally,  it 
was  God  himself  who  fell  in  the  fall  of  His  creatures  by  Him 
planned.  To  explain  original  sin,  which  is  the  root  of  all  sin, 
the  sin  of  Lucifer,  theologians  have  resorted  not  to  a  tempta- 
tion within  the  realm  of  sense,  but  to  a  temptation  within  the 
realm  of  intelligence.  It  was  by  pride  that  the  angels  fell. 
Their  sin  rose  thus  out  of  the  very  centre  of  their  minds.  But 
pride  is  incidental  only  to  short-sightedness.  Complete  science 
is  aware  of  its  own  limitations.  Pride,  therefore,  results  from 
insufficiency  of  knowledge.  The  pride  of  the  angels  was  due 
to  God.  One  may  have  reasons  for  wishing  to  do  and  for 
doing  evil,  but  reasons  do  not  hold  in  the  face  of  reason  itself. 
If,  according  to  the  partisans  of  free-will,  human  intelligence 
is  capable  by  virtue  of  pride  and  inner  perversity  of  creating 
out  of  nothing  motives  for  evil-doing,  it  is  at  least  incapable 
of  so  doing  except  in  so  far  as  its  knowledge  is  limited,  ambig- 
uous and  uncertain.  Practically,  nobody  hesitates  except  in 
the  absence  of  absolute  knowledge.  There  is  no  such  thing 
as  rationally  and  consciously  flying  in  the  face  of  reason. 
Lucifer  was,  therefore,  by  his  very  nature  impeccable.  The 
will  to  do  evil  is  borne  of  the  opposition  which  an  imperfect 
intelligence  fancies  it  perceives,  in  a  world  hypothetically  per- 
fect, between  its  own  advantage  and  the  advantage  of  everybody 
else.  But  if  God  and  his  works  are  really  perfect,  such  an 
antinomy  between  the  good  of  the  individual  and  the  uni- 
versal good,  which  even  to  the  best  human  intelligences  appears 
provisional  only,  would  a  fortiori  appear  so  to  one  of  the 
archangels  of  the  intelligence,  to  the  Light-bearer  of  thought. 
To  know  is  to  participate  in  the  supreme  truth,  in  the  divine 
conscience ;  to  possess  all  knowledge  would  be  to  possess, 
among  other  things,  the  moral  insight  of  God ;  and  how 
out  the  midst  of  all  that  divinity  should  anything  Satanic 
arise  ? 


44°  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

To-day,  when  a  sin  is  committed   among  men  and  it  cannot 
be  traced  to  any  fault   of  education,  or  of  environment,  or  of 
„  ,  ,  overwhelming  temptation,  men   of    science   look 

responsible  in  the    for  the  explanation  among  the  ancestors  of  the 
astresor .  guilty  person,  in  the  conviction  that  they  must  be 

in  the  presence  of  a  case  of  atavism.  No  such  explanation 
could  exist  in  the  case  of  God's  firstborn.  When  the  world 
was  young  and  beautiful  and  good,  original  sin  was  as  won- 
derful as  the  first  appearance  of  the  world  itself;  it  was  a 
veritable  creation  of  something  out  of  nothing.  Satan's  crea- 
tion was  superior  to  God's.  His  vaoxzX  fiat  nox  was  greater  in 
genius  and  creative  power  than  Qio^'?,  fiat  lux.  In  effect,  every 
religious  explanation  of  evil  ultimately  leads  to  the  ascription, 
of  it  to  God  himself  or  to  a  being  more  powerful  than  God, 
and  in  both  cases  equally  the  Creator  is  debased.  That  fact 
constitutes  the  principal  reason  that  compromises  the  creation 
hypothesis,  properly  so  called,  for  every  philosophical  mind. 

II.  The  second   notion  of  theism    is    that    of    Providence, 

which  may    be    either   general    or  special.     Along   with    the 

o     ■  1  Tj     ■      notion    of    a   special    Providence    governing  the 

Special  Provi-  ^  &  s> 

dence  and  mira-  world  from  without,  we  have  seen  that  the  notion 
^  ^^"  of  miracle  must  be  included.     The  sole  means  by 

which  these  two  decrepit  conceptions  can  be  defended  are  the 
following :  Conceive,  with  Pascal,  two  worlds,  a  physical  world 
and  above  it  the  moral  world  enveloping  it,  and  in  places  pene- 
trating it.  The  points  of  intersection,  so  to  speak,  between 
the  moral  and  physical  world  are  miracles.  They  are  not  so 
much  breaches  in  the  laws  of  nature  as  afifirmations  of  superior 
laws.  Such  is  the  argument ;  but  we  reply  that  the  so-called 
superior  laws  are  inevitably,  in  certain  respects,  contradictory 
to  those  of  nature,  in  the  very  respects  in  reference  to  which 
the  miracle  has  happened.  One  cannot,  for  example,  suppose 
that  a  saint,  precipitated  from  the  height  of  a  rock,  resists  the 
law  of  gravitation  and  floats  up  to  heaven,  without  a  manifest 
contradiction,  so  far  as  natural  laws  are  concerned ;  without  a 
destruction,  indeed,  of  those  laws.  More  than  that,  a  moral 
law  is  such   precisely  in  so  far  as  it  differs  in  the  lines  of  its 


THEISM.  441 

applicability  from    natural   law;  just   in    so    far    as  a  conflict 

between  it  and  natural  laws  is  inconceivable.     Only  a  natural 

law  can  suspend  (and  that  apparently  only)  the  operation  of  a 

natural  law. 

It  has  been  fancied  that  the  difficulty  about  miracles  may 

be  done  away  with  by  conceiving  that   Providence  acts,  not 

«xx      ..  ,■   ■.   upon   the    material    universe,   but    upon    human 
Attempt  to  limit       ^  .        . 

its  activity  to  the  thought,  by  means  of  suggestion,  mspirations 
subjective  side.  j^.^^^  ^^  high,  providential  ideas;  but  contempo- 
rary science  has  established  so  intimate  a  connection  between 
motion  and  thought  that  it  is  impossible  to  distinguish  be- 
tween an  influence  exerted  in  the  spiritual  and  an  influence 
exerted  in  the  material  world.  It  is  hopeless  to  attempt  to' 
immaterialize  Providence  in  order  to  save  it.  The  special 
intervention  of  Providence  must  be  material  or  not  at  all.  ' 

"     The  old  conception  of  miracles  and  of  the  supernatural  and 
special   Providence  was  therefore,  in  a  certain   sense,  logical. 
Religions  had   not  been  mistaken ;  they  had  per- 
PrSencT^  ceived    that    the    day    Providence    became    too 

exclusively  universal  religion  would  be  absorbed 
in  metaphysics,  and  this  result,  in  effect,  will  be   produced   in 
the  future.     Religions  have  never  supported  the  theory  of  a 
general  Providence,  and  it  is  certain  that  if  a  general  Providence 
sufficed  for  the  abstract    reason  of   a  Malebranche,   with  his 
sense  of  order,  symmetry,  and  law,  it  would  not  suffice  for  the 
human  heart,  with  its  sense  of  justice  and  its  desire,  if  it  is  to 
sacrifice  itself  for  God,  to  find  in  the  God  at  least  a  defender 
and  a  benefactor.     A  benefit  loses  its  value  as  such  by  being 
too  indirect  ;  humanity  has  little  understanding  of  justice  in 
general  which  treats  the  individual  as  a  means  of  securing  the 
good  of  the  whole  and  sacrifices  him  at  need — at  least,  for  a 
time.     Charity,  like  justice,  it   seems  to  him,  should  be  indi- 
vidual and   special.     A   universal   Providence   is  so   universal 
that  no  traces  of  it  exist  in  the  details  of  life,  and  in  especial 
in   the   particular  evils  and  sufferings  which  form  so  large  a 
part  of  life.     The  God   of   Malebranche,  who  is  incapable  of 
showing  His  effective  benevolence  to  any  of  us  individually,  is 
paralyzed,  as  Louis  XIV.  was,  by  His  very  greatness.     He   is 


442  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

the  sole  being  who  cannot  move  without  breaking  a  natural 
law,  and  who  consequently  is  condemned  to  eternal  immobility. 
The  least  of  His  interventions  being  a  miracle,  He  cannot 
employ  the  means  that  other  beings  employ  without  dero- 
gating from  His  dignity  and  His  power;  so  that  God  is  re- 
duced, if  He  is  to  remain  God,  either  to  standing  inert  or  to 
contradicting  our  intelligence.  By  that  very  fact  He  ceases  to 
be  lovable,  unless  one  pretend  to  love  Him  precisely  for 
what  He  cannot  do,  for  the  benevolence  that  He  cannot  show, 
as  for  the  prayers  He  cannot  grant.  Pity  is  the  sole  sentiment 
that  can  be  roused  in  us  by  a  being  who  is  so  good  that  He 
cannot  wish  evil,  and  so  powerless  that  He  is  obliged  to  see 
nothing  but  evil  accomplished  in  the  world.  No  human 
misery  could  be  comparable  to  a  divine  misery  like  that.  The 
very  height  of  suffering  must  be  experienced  by  a  God  who 
should  at  once  be  conscious  of  His  own  infinity  and  should 
feel  the  distance  which  separates  Him  from  the  world  which 
He  has  created.  Only  the  clear  and  profound  vision  of  such 
a  God  could  penetrate  the  abyss  of  evil  to  the  bottom,  and  it 
is  He  of  all  beings  in  the  world  who  would  suffer  from  an 
eternal  vertigo. 

What    is   most   unacceptable  in    the    traditional    notion   of 

Providence  is   the    attribute    of    omnipotence.      In    the   first 

place,   divine   omnipotence    is    inconsistent   with 

^  ^^^  the   existence    of    evil ;  in    the    second    place,    it 

ommpoteEce.  '  _  r  > 

leads  logically  to  the  possibility  of  supernatural 
intervention  in  this  world,  which,  if  it  is  to  be  of  any  service, 
must  be  special  and  not  general.  To  avoid  these  implications 
of  the  conception  of  Providence,  John  Stuart  Mill  has  con- 
ceived a  superior  and  divine  being  who  should  not  be  all- 
powerful.  This  being  would  be  the  principle  of  good,  acting 
in  the  universe  according  to  natural  laws,  but  hindered  and 
retarded  in  his  action  by  these  laws  themselves,  which  bring 
suffering  and  death.  The  existence  of  such  a  being  once  es- 
tablished, religion  would  be  saved  and  morality  confirmed. 
Virtue  would  consist  in  a  sort  of  co-operation  with  this  great 
unknown  being,  who  is  struggling  against  evil.     The  good  man 


THEISM.  443 

would  feel  that  he  was  aiding  God  and  that  God  was  aiding 
him  in  so  far  as  He  found  it  possible. 

This  amended  conception  of  Providence  is  more  admissible 
and  more  reconcilable  with  the  real  and  imperfect  world  that 
we  are  familiar  with.      But  it  must  be  confessed 
Non-omnipotent  j-j^^j.  j-j^g  amendment  amounts  to  an  almost  com- 
plete cancellation.      If  Providence  is  to  be  reduced 
thus  simply  to  one  of  the  forces  at   work  in  nature,  to  the 
force  that  makes  more  or  less  partially  and  provisionally  for 
goodness,  there  is  nothing  to  distinguish   it   from  the  power 
that  makes  for  evolution,  from  natural  selection,  or  from  any 
other  beneficent  natural  law.     To  personify  such  laws  is  futile 
scientifically;  and,  practically,  is  it  so  very  useful  ?     Or  con- 
ceive the  being  as  existent  side  by  side  with   these   laws  and 
watching  their  operation,  but  unable  to  contravene  it ;  but  so 
to  do  is  to  return  to  the  conception  of  an  ineffective,  immobile 
God.      The   prime  condition  of  existence  for  a  God  is  to  be 
good   for   something;  a  non-omnipotent  God  soon  comes  to 
be  an  impotent  God.      The  actual  world  marks  the   extreme 
limits  of  the  power  of  such  a  God,  and  at  some  stage  in  the 
course  of  evolution  the  unconscious  forces  of  nature,  leagued 
together  against  the  principle  of  goodness,  may  succeed  in 
paralyzing  it  entirely. 

More  than  that,  is  a  non-omnipotent  God   to  be  conceived 

as  eternal?      If  not.  He  is  in  no  very  striking  respect  superior 

,     „  ,      to  man.     His  power  is  so  slight  that  He  has  not 

Is  such  a  God  ^  ° 

to  be  conceived       even  been  able  to  make   it  very  clearly  manifest 

as  eternal?  ^^  mankind  that   it   exists  at   all.     Or  if   He  is 

eternal,  and  eternally  present  in  all  things,  then  His  lack  of 

power  is  growing  and   becoming   radical.     One  may  in   any 

event  congratulate  one's  self  that  a  blind  and  indifferent  uni- 

o 

verse  has,  among  all  possible  combinations,  fallen  by  chance 
into  the  one  which  constitutes  our  present  world  ;  but  a  God 
who  has  pursued  goodness  conscientiously  through  a  whole 
eternity  demonstrates  His  complete  incapacity,  if  He  has  suc- 
ceeded in  producing  nothing  better  than  such  a  miscarriage  of 
the  ideal  as  this  universe.  The  judgment  that  may  fairly  be 
passed  upon  the  world  is  altogether  dependent  upon  the  ques- 


444  NOX-RELIGION  OF   THE  FUTURE. 

tion  who  made  it  and  who  created  hfe  ;  if  the  world  is  self- 
evolved,  it  may  well  appear  to  us  as  possessing  a  certain 
beauty,  as  giving  an  earnest  of  better  things;  but  if  it  is  the 
work  of  an  intelligent  will,  present  in  all  things,  and  persisting 
in  its  designs  throughout  the  eternity  of  the  past,  it  is  inevi- 
table that  one  should  feel  that  this  volition  has  not  been  pos- 
sessed of  great  power,  that  the  importance  of  the  victory  is 
not  in  proportion  to  the  duration  of  the  struggle,  that  such  a 
God  does  not  constitute  a  very  solid  support,  and  that  His  ex- 
istence is  a  matter  of  indifference  to  the  future  of  the  universe. 
Is  such  a  God  more  powerful  than  humanity,  or  even  so  pow- 
erful?  His  eternity  is  but  a  proof  of  voluntary  or  forced 
inaction;  far  from  dignifying  Him  it  debases  Him.  On  the 
surface  of  the  earth  there  are  many  species  of  insects  which 
were  probably  in  existence  before  the  race  of  man.  In  the 
transparent  amber  that  belongs  to  tertiary  strata  may  be  seen 
the  little  corselet  of  themelipones  caught  and  held  there  these 
past  five  hundred  thousand  years.  Are  these  distant  prede- 
cessors of  the  human  race  on  that  account  more  venerable  ? 

John   Stuart  Mill,  a  disciple  of  Auguste  Comte,  put  forth 

this  theory  of  a  non-omnipotent  Providence,  conceived  on  the 

model  of  the   human  will,  with  a  certain   mental 

The  religion        reservation;  his  real  meaning  was  that  for  many 
of  humanity.  ,    i  •         r 

cultivated  men  such  a  bemg,  labourmg  for  good- 
ness, according  to  the  utmost  of  its  limited  power,  would  be 
confounded  with  humanity,  taken  as  a  whole.  Humanity  is, 
in  effect,  according  to  Comte,  a  great  being  of  divine  aspira- 
tions, to  whom  one  might,  with  all  one's  heart,  render  homage; 
in  especial,  if  one  leaves  out  of  account  the  individuals  who 
are,  properly  speaking,  only  parasites,  and  do  not  co-operate 
for  the  production  of  the  common  result,  whom  progress 
consists  precisely  in  excluding  from  society.  Religion,  on  thisl 
theory,  is  the  state  of  spiritual  unity  resulting  from  the  con-j 
vergence  of  all  our  thoughts  and  all  our  actions  toward  the 
service  of  humanity.  This,  as  Mill  said,  is  a  genuine  religion, 
quite  capable  of  resisting  sceptical  attack  and  of  undertaking 
the  labour  of  the  older  cults.     According  to  this  doctrine, 


THEISM.  445 

Providence  is  simply  humanity,  looking  after  the  interest  of  its 
individual  members.  Such  a  Providence,  regarded  as  one  with 
human  volition,  might  assuredly  be  accepted  by  any  philoso- 
pher ;  it  marks,  as  we  shall  see  later,  the  extreme  limit  of  which 
the  development  of  the  notion  of  a  Special  Providence  is  sus- 
ceptible, the  point  at  which  this  notion  and  the  conception  of 
human  morality  become  one.  The  precept  to  love  mankind 
in  God  becomes  transformed  into  the  precept  to  love  God  in 
mankind.  P"or  a  philosopher  who  identifies  God  with  his 
ideal,  both  precepts  are  equally  true  and  beautiful.  We  have 
ourselves  shown  how  the  religious  sentiment  in  the  course  of 
its  evolution  tends  to  become  one  with  the  respect  and  love  of 
humanity,  and  how  religious  faith  tends  to  develop  into  a 
moral  faith,  and  a  simple  and  active  hopefulness  in  the  tri- 
umph of  moral  goodness. 

John  Stuart  Mill's  and  Comte's  ideas  are  thus  shielded 
against  criticism  so  long  as  they  are  taken  in  a  general  and 
almost  metaphorical  sense;  but  if  they  are  to  be 
interpreted  literally  and  made  the  basis  of  a  cult 
and  a  religion  of  humanity,  they  are  puerile  simply.  Precisely 
because  Providence  can  be  realized  by  humanity,  the  cult  for 
Providence,  with  all  its  ceremonies,  invocations,  adorations, 
which  are  manifest  and  ridiculous  paganism,  must  be  sup- 
pressed. Every  organism  exemplifies  a  certain  sort  of 
Providence — even  the  social  organism,  which  is  the  equi- 
librium of  the  laws  of  life.  The  totality  of  an  organism  is 
truly  admirable,  and  one  may  readily  understand  how  any 
individual  member,  if  he  is  endowed  with  consciousness,  might 
admire  the  whole  to  which  he  belongs ;  but  how  could  he 
make  it  the  object  of  a  cult?  The  cellules  which  constitute 
me  might  well  be  interested  in  the  preservation  of  what  I  call 
myself  and  help  each  other,  and  by  that  very  fact  help  me  to 
that  end,  but  they  could  not  adore  me.  Love  of  humanity  is 
one  thing,  and  idolatry  of  humanity,  or  sociolatry,  according 
to  Comte's  term,  is  another.  A  really  sincere  and  enlightened 
love  of  humanity  is  the  very  opposite  of  such  idolatry  ;  would 
be  by  it  compromised  and  corrupted.  The  cult  for  humanity 
reminds  one  of  the  antique,  naive  cult  for  the  family,  for  the 


446  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

lares,  for  the  hearth,  for  the  sacred  fire  kept  alive  beneath  the 
ashes.  To  preserve  respect  and  love  to-day  does  not  require  a 
resuscitation  of  all  these  superstitions;  respect  and  love  pass 
from  heart  to  heart  without  need  of  ceremonial  as  a  medium. 
The  Positivist  religion,  far  from  being  a  step  in  advance,  is  a 
step  backward  toward  the  superstitious  beliefs  which  have  been 
banished  because  they  were  useless,  and  consequently  harmful. 

Relifrion  oueht  to  be  not  only  human  but  cosmic,  and  such 

it  will  be  by  the  very  nature  of  the  case  as  the  result  of  reflec- 

tion.     Theism   will  be  obliged,  if  it  is  to  subsist 

Keligion  must     ^^   all,  to  Confine   itself  to  the  vaguest  possible 

De  cosmic.  ' 

afifirmation  of  a  principle  analogous  to  the  soul 
as  the  mysterious  origin  of  the  world  and  of  its  development. 
The  essential  character  of  this  principle  must  be  that  it  is  not 
really  separate  from  the  world  nor  opposed  to  its  determinism. 
Beliefs  in  the  creation  and  in  a  special  Providence  will  give 
place  more  and  more  to  belief  in  some  spontaneous  action, 
which  is  essential  to  beings  generally,  and  in  especial  to  those 
who  are  endowed  with  consciousness.  Religion  has  gradually 
•come  to  be  a  metaphysics  of  immanent  finality,  consisting  in 
the  single  general  proposition :  the  world  possesses  a  signifi- 
cance, and  is  making  toward  an  end  and  aim  of  its  own ;'  the 
world  is  a  society  of  beings  who  may  come  to  discover  in 
themselves  an  identity  of  moral  impulse.^  God  is  the  term 
by  which  we  designate  what  renders  the  movement  of  the 
world  toward  a  state  of  peace,  concord,  and  harmony  possible. 
And  since  for  human  intelligence  the  possible  and  the  real'  are 
confused,  a  belief  in  the  possibility  of  a  better  world  becomes 
the  belief  in  something  divine  which  is  immanent  in  this  world. 
Between  idealistic  theism  and  atheism  the  distance  may  be 
diminished  ad  infinitiun.  Many  atheists,  language  to  the 
contrary  notwithstanding,  are  already  at  one  with  theists,  in- 
toxicated with  God.  If  the  actual  existence  of  God  be  called 
in   question,  at  least   His   progressive  existence,  the  progres- 

»  Kant's  Kritik  der  Urtheils-Kraft. 

''■  See  M.  A.  Fouillee,  Les  sysiemes  de  morale  contemporains . 

^See  Aristotle,  Metaphysica,  and  Hegel's  Logik. 


THEISM.  447 

sive  realization  of  an  ideal,  the  gradual  descent  of  Christ  from 
heaven  to  earth,  may  be  admitted.  The  presentiment  of 
progress  thus  becomes  merged  in  a  sense  of  the 
aSinsLibly  actual  presence  of  the  divine.  The  ideal  seems 
pass  into  each  to  live  and  palpitate  in  the  world  about  one  ;  it 
°*^"'  is  as  if  an  artist's  vision  of  his  work  should  be 

so  intense  that  it  should  seem  to  float  out   of  his  brain  and 
take  its  place  upon  the  untouched  canvass  before  him. 

The  power  of  words  is  limited  ;  there  are  shades  and  subtle- 
ties of  thought  that  cannot  be  expressed  in  language.     What 

,     possible  verbal  reply  can   be   given   to   questions 

Theism  mnstbe    ^  .  i  r    i-         i-  ^      <<  t*. 

furnished  with  a    like  thosc   that    Marguerite  asks  ot   i^aust.''        It 

new  vocabulary,  j^  ^  j^^g  ^jj^^  ^jj^^g  ^hou  wert  at  mass  .  .  .  dost 
thou  believe  in  God?"  "  My  beloved,"  replies  Faust,  "  who 
would  dare  to  say  I  believe  in  God  ?  "  .  .  .  "So  thou  dost  not 
believe  in  Him  ?  .  .  .  Who  would  dare  to  say  that  he  does  not 
believe  when  he  listens  to  the  voice  of  his  heart,  when  a 
sense  of  tenderness  and  happiness  fills  his  soul  ?  Pronounce 
the  first  words  that  occur  to  thee.  What  difference  what  thou 
callest  it :  happiness,  heart,  love,  God  ?  The  feeling  is  every- 
thing, the  word  is  vain."  The  deist  philosopher  who  holds 
words  cheap  seems  to  the  superficial  multitude  to  be  simply  a 
hypocritical  sceptic;  whereas  the  rigid  atheist  displays  the 
narrowness  of  a  sectary.  WHiat  is  certain  is  that  the  name  of 
God  has  sometimes  been  associated  with  the  greatest  of 
human  conceptions,  sometimes  with  the  most  barbarous.  The 
theistic  hypothesis  cannot  continue  to  subsist  unless  it  be 
freed  once  for  all  from  puerile  and  gross  associations. 

It  is  tow^ard  this  consummation  that  theism,  at   its  best,  and 

in    particular    what    Kant    calls    religion,   within 

Kational  |.}^g   limits  presented   by    reason,  is  tending.     It 

religion,  ^  /       . 

merits   a   special  examination. 

The    neo-Kantian    religion    ascribes    the  supreme  place  to 

moral  goodness  as  the  directing  principle  of  every  reasonable 

will.    From  that  premise  the  neo-Kantians  deduce 

Neo-Kantianism.  ^,  ^^^_^^  liberty  "  as  the   condition  of   goodness. 

For  goodness,  in  their  judgment,  is  simply  freedom  conceived 
as  appearing  to  itself  in  its  intellectual  purity,  and  dominating 


448  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

the  phenomenal  self.  Freedom  thus  conceived  occupies  a 
place  above  phenomena,  which  belong  essentially  to  necessity 
and  to  determinism.  Kaiitians  found  also  implied  in  the 
notion  of  absolute  liberty,  subject  to  the  condition  of  time, 
the  attribute  of  eternity.  They  say,  with  Spinoza :  "  I  feel, 
and  I  know  that  I  am  eternal ;  eternity  is  one  with  divinity. 
Is  it  not  the  eternal  that  all  the  nations  of  men  have  adored  ? 
I  feel  God  therefore  present  in  myself.  He  reveals  himself  to 
me  in  the  moral  ideal.  But  is  this  God  that  my  conscience 
reveals  to  me  really  myself?  Is  he  each  of  us,  and  must  one 
believe  that  the  universe  in  the  last  resort  is,  as  has  been  said, 
a  republic  of  free-wills — that  there  are  thus  as  many  Gods  as  in- 
dividuals, and  that  we  are  all  Gods  ?  Or  does  this  multiplicity 
of  individuals  and  of  personalities  exist  only  in  appearance, 
and  is  the  universe  at  bottom  the  expression  of  a  single  will? 
Theism  may  choose  between  these  two  hypotheses — between 
a  sort  of  metaphysical  and  moral  polytheism  and  a  sort  of 
monotheism,  and  may  subsequently  arrange  to  its  liking  the 
relations  which  it  may  suppose  to  exist  between  the  absolute 
will  and  the  world  of  phenomenon.  But  a  belief  in  a  moral 
ideal  does  not  in  the  least  involve  anything  more  than  a  belief 
in  something  eternal  and  divine,  as  shaping  the  universal 
course  of  things.  One  cannot  bend  it  to  the  service  of  any 
one  determinate  religion,  rather  than  of  any  other.  Within 
certain  limits,  however,  it  may  lend  some  support  to  the  moral 
and  religious  sentiments.  The  most  acceptable  form  of  theistic 
doctrine  in  the  future  will,  no  doubt,  be  some  moral  philoso- 
phy analagous  to  that  of  Kant.  Kantianism  itself,  however, 
is  too  closely  bound  up  with  the  notion  of  duty,  properly  so 
called,  and  with  the  categorical  imperative.  It,  like  Judaism, 
is  a  religion  of  law.  Instead  o^  the  law,  one  will  content  one's 
self,  in  all  probability,  in  the  future,  with  an  ideal  conceived  as 
supreme  above  all  things,  and  as  exercising  upon  our  thought 
and  will  the  highest  attraction  that  can  be  exercised  by  what 
has  been  called  the  power  of  an  ideal.' 

A  belief  in  the  divine  will  then  no  longer  consist  in  passive 
adoration,  but  in  action.    A  belief  in  Providence  will  no  longer 

'  See  the  criticism  of  Kantianism  in  the  Systemes  de  morale  contemporains ,  by 
M.  Alfred  Fouille'e. 


THEISM.  449 

consist  in  a  justification  of  the  existing  world  and  of  its  evils  in 
the  name  of  the  divine  intention,  but  in  an  effort  to  introduce 
Belief  consists  ^V  1^^"^^"  intervention  a  greater  amount  of  justice 
not  in  worship,  and  of  goodness  into  the  world.  We  have  seen 
but  in  action.         ^j^^^  ^j^^  notion  of  Providence  was  based  among 

ancient  peoples  on  the  conception  of  an  exterior  finality,  forcibly 
imposed  upon  things,  of  a  secret  and  transcendent  aim,  which 
the  universe  was  warped  to  serve  by  force  of  some  unknown  will. 
With  such  a  theory  of  things,  man  was  incessantly  checked  in  his 
activity,  since  he  conceived  it  to  be  impossible  to  prevent  the 
course  of  the  world  from  achieving  its  aim.  The  world  seemed 
to  him  to  be  organized  definitively  ;  he  had  no  hope,  except  in 
prayer  and  miracle  ;  everything  about  him  seemed  to  him  to  be 
sacred  ;  the  inviolability  of  nature  was  both  a  principle  and  a 
consequence  of  the  notion  of  Providence  thus  understood. 
And,  as  we  have  seen,  science  was  long  regarded  as  sacrilegious. 
It  created  both  surprise  and  scandal  to  see  science  intervene  in 
the  affairs  of  this  world,  disturbing  everything,  changing  the 
direction  of  natural  forces,  transforming  the  divine  rulers  of  the 
world  into  humble  ministrants  to  human  wants.  In  our  days, 
however,  science  is  coming  to  be  more  and  more  held  in 
honour.  For  the  past  century  nature  has  been,  to  the  best  of 
human  ability,  turned  upside  down.  Humanity's  long  quietism 
has  been  succeeded  by  a  feverish  activity.  Everybody  wishes 
to  lend  a  hand  in  the  universal  mechanism,  and  to  con- 
tribute his  part  in  the  modification  of  the  direction  of  the 
whole  ;  everybody  wishes  to  bend  things  to  his  own  views, 
and  to  become,  so  far  as  in  him  lies,  a  minor  Providence. 

Just  as  the  individual  is  coming  to  feel  himself  more  and  more 

a  citizen  of  the  state,  so  he  is  coming  to  feel  himself  more  and 

more  a  citizen  of  the  universe,  inseparably  bound 

poweTof  m^al-        by  relations  of  cause  and  effect  with  the  universal 

kind  in  the  sum  of  phenomena.     He  recognizes  that  there  is 

universe.  ,  .         .         ,  111,1  ^  1  • 

nothmg  m  the  world  that  does  not  concern  him, 
and  that  on  every  side  he  can  exert  an  influence,  great  or 
small,  and  leave  his  mark  on  the  great  world.  He  perceives 
with  astonishment  the  extent  of  the  power  of  his  will  and  in- 
telligence.    Just  in  so  far  as  his  rational  faculties  establish  a 


45°  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

connection  between  phenomena,  they  establish  by  that  very 
fact  a  connection  between  phenomena  and  himself,  and  he  no 
longer  feels  himself  alone  in  the  universe.  Since,  according  to 
a  celebrated  theory,  the  centre  of  the  world  is  in  each  and 
every  distinct  being,  it  follows  that  if  this  centre  were  ex- 
haustively self-conscious  it  would  see  all  the  rays  in  infinite 
space  focussing  in  it,  and  all  the  chains  of  phenomenal  causa- 
tion meeting  in  it,  and  the  effects  of  its  volition  stretching  out 
into  infinity,  and  its  every  action  possessing  an  influence  upon 
the  totality  of  things.  It  would  perceive  itself  to  be  a  sort 
of  universal  Providence. 

If  human  beings  are  not  so  exhaustively  self-conscious  as 

all  that,  the   progress  of  science  is  carrying  them   forward  in 

,  that  direction.     A  portion  of  the  government  of 

A  consequence  ^  ° 

of  liberty  of  nature  is  in  our  hands,  some  part  of  the  responsi- 

*  ""^^  *■  bility  for  what  takes  place  in  the  universe  is  on  our 

heads.  At  the  beginning  man  conceived  himself  as  living  in 
a  state  of  dependence  on  the  world,  in  a  state  which  ancient 
religions  symbolize  ;  at  present  he  perceives  that  the  world  is 
equally  dependent  upon  him.  The  substitution  of  a  human 
providence  for  the  omnipresent  influence  of  a  divine  providence 
might  be  given  as  being,  from  this  point  of  view,  the  formula  of 
progress  ;  the  increasing  independence  of  mankind,  in  the  face 
of  the  natural  universe,  will  thus  result  in  an  increasing  inner 
independence,  in  a  growing  independence  of  mind  and  thought. 
The  vulgar  conception  of  a  special  and  exterior  providence 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  is  so  closely  bound  up  with  the  con- 
M   v  J  *  u      ception  of  man's  place  in  the  universe  as  one  of 

Mankind  to  be  ^  ^ 

its  own  special  subjection — nay,  even  the  most  refined  conception 
provi  ence.  ^^  providence  as  transcendent  and  distant  and  as 

assigning  to  each  being  its  determinate  place  in  the  totality  of 
things — may  thus,  without  ground  of  regret,  be  displaced  in  the 
mind  of  humanity.  We  shall  some  day  perceive  that  we  are 
stronger  when  we  stand  on  our  feet,  shoulder  to  shoulder, 
hand  in  hand,  than  when  we  kneel  with  bowed  heads  and  im- 
plore the  unfeeling  sky.  Among  the  ancient  Germans,  when 
one  of  the  faithful  was  about  to  enter  a  sacred  forest  he  had 
his  hands  bound  together  as  a  symbol  of  his  subjection  to  the 


THEISM.  45  T 

gods;  if  he  had  the  misfortune  to  fall  as  he  was  making  his 
way  into  the  forest,  he  did  not  dare  to  get  up  again  ;  so  to  do 
would  have  been  an  affront  to  the  gods;  he  was  reduced  to 
squirming  and  rolling  like  a  reptile  out  of  the  immense  temple. 
To  this  primitive  conception  of  religious  servitude,  the 
modern  conception  of  mankind  as  free  in  the  presence  of  its 
God,  of  its  beloved  ideal,  of  its  conceived  work  in  the  world, 
of  its  dream  of  progress,  is  more  and  more  opposed.  Even  at 
the  present  day  a  true  sense  of  the  divine  may  be  recognized 
by  its  giving  man  a  consciousness  of  his  liberty  and  his  dignity 
rather  than  his  subjection  ;  the  true  gods  are  those  who  make 
us  lift  our  heads  higher  in  the  struggle  for  existence  ;  adoration 
no  longer  consists   in  prostration  but  in  standing  upright. 

To  borrow  once  more  from  the  classic  land  of  symbolism, 

from   India,   whence    our  German    or  Gallic   ancestors    came, 

the  great  epic  of  Ramayana  tells  us  of  a  sainted 

h  V  ^"*^  sage  anchorite  who  exemplified  in  his  own 

person  the  whole  sum  of  human  virtue  and  piety. 
One  day,  confiding  in  the  justice  of  heaven,  he  was  invoking 
Indra  and  the  whole  chorus  of  the  gods,  and  the  gods  were 
capricious  and  did  not  listen  to  him  ;  his  prayer  fell  back  from 
the  heavens  unheard.  The  man,  perceiving  the  indiffer- 
ence of  the  gods,  was  moved  with  indignation  ;  and  gath- 
ering together  the  power  that  he  had  hoarded,  by  his 
sacrifices  and  renunciation,  and,  feeling  himself  more  power- 
ful than  his  gods,  more  powerful  than  Indra  himself,  began 
to  issue  forth  commands  to  the  high  heavens.  And  at  his 
voice  new  stars  rose  and  shone  in  the  crystal  sphere  ;  he  said, 
"  Let  there  be  light !  "  and  there  was  light ;  he  refashioned 
the  world ;  his  goodness  became  a  creative  providence.  Nor 
was  this  all  :  he  conceived  the  notion  of  creating  new  and  bet- 
ter gods;  and  Indra  himself  was  trembling  toward  his  fall,  for 
not  even  he  that  commands  the  air  and  the  skies  shall  prevail 
against  sanctity.  Indra,  the  powerful,  therefore  hastened  to 
yield  and  cried  out  to  the  saint,  "  Thy  will  be  done  !  "  and  he 
left  a  place  in  the  heavens  for  the  new  stars,  and  their  light 
bears  eternal  witness  to  the  omnipotence  of  goodness,  which 
is  the  supreme  God  and  object  of  adoration  amorig_nien. 

UNIVERSITY 


CHAPTER  IV. 

PANTHEISM. 

Review  of  the  Principal   Metaphysical   Hypotheses  which  will   Re- 
place Dogma. — Continued. 

I.  Optimistic  pantheism — Transformation  of  transcendent  Deism 
into  immanent  theism  and  pantheism — Disanthropomorphized 
God,  according  to  Messrs.  Fiske  and  Spencer — Diverse  forms 
of  pantheism — Optimistic  and  intellectuahstic  pantheism  of 
Spinoza — Objections,  Spinoza's  fatahsm — The  moral  signifi- 
cance that  might  be  lent  to  pantheism  by  the  introduction  of 
some  notion  of  a  final  cause — Qualities  and  defects  of  panthe- 
ism—  Conception  of  unity  upon  which  it  is  founded — This  con- 
ception criticised — Its  possible  subjectivity. 

II.  Pessimistic  pantheism — Pessimistic  interpretation  of  religions 
in  Germany — i.  Causes  of  the  progress  of  pessimism  in  the 
present  epoch — Progress  of  pantheistic  metaphysics  and  of 
positive  science — Penalties  incident  to  thought  and  reflection — 
Mental  depression  and  sense  of  powerlessness,  etc. — 2.  Is  pessi- 
mism curable  .'' — Possible  remedies — The  labour  problem  and 
the  future  of  society — Illusions  involved  in  pessimism — Inexacti- 
tude of  its  estimate  of  pleasures  and  pains — Quotation  from 
Leopardi — Criticism  of  the  practical  results  of  pessimism — 
Nirvana — An  experiment  in  Nirvana — Will  pessimistic  panthe- 
ism be  the  religion  of  the  future  .'' 


o" 


As  theism  becomes  immanent,  the  personahty  of  God 
comes  to   be  more  and  more  vaguely  conceived.     It   is  the 

Conce  tionof  very  existence  of  God's  personahty  that  panthe- 
God  being  disan-    ism  either  denies  or  confounds  with  that  of  the 

ropomorp  ize  ,    m^jygj-sg^     According   to    Mr.    Spencer   and  Mr. 

Fiske,  the  movement  which  led  humanity  to  conceive  its  God 
anthropomorphically  will  be  succeeded  by  a  movement  in  the 
opposite  direction  ;  God  will  be  deprived  of  all  of  His  human 
attributes,  will  be  disanthropomorphized.  He  will  first  be 
shorn  of  His  lower  impulses,  and  then  of  everything  which  is 
analogous  to  human  sensibility ;    the  highest    human   senti- 

452 


PANTHEISM.  453 

ments  will  be  regarded  as  too  gross  to  be  attributed  to  Him. 
Similarly  with  the  attributes  of  intelligence  and  will ;  every 
human  faculty  will  in  its  turn  be  abstracted  and  divinity,  as  it 
becomes  relieved  of  its  limitations,  will  lose,  one  after  the 
other,  every  item  of  its  significance  to  the  intelligence ;  it  will 
be  conceived  ultimately  as  a  vague  unity  simply,  which  eludes 
the  forms  of  distinct  thought.  Pantheism  lends  itself  to  this 
notion  of  an  indeterminate  and  indeterminable  disanthropo- 
morphized  divinity.  Nevertheless,  the  crudest  and  most 
naive  speculations,  anthropomorphism  and  fetichism,  in  Mr. 
Spencer's  judgment,  contained  a  part  of  the  truth,  namely,  that 
the  power  that  manifests  itself  in  consciousness  is  simply  a 
different  form  of  the  mysterious  power  that  manifests  itself 
beyond  consciousness.  The  last  result  attained  by  human 
science,  Mr.  Spencer  thinks,  is  that  the  unknown  force  which 
exists  outside  of  consciousness  is,  if  not  similar  to  the  known 
force  that  exists  in  consciousness,  at  least  a  simple  mode  of 
the  same  force,  since  the  two  are  convertible  into  each  other. 
So  that  the  final  result  of  the  line  of  speculation  begun  by 
primitive  man  is  that  the  power  which  manifests  itself  in  the 
material  universe  is  the  same  as  that  which  manifests  itself 
in  us  under  the  form  of  consciousness. 

If  pantheism  goes  the  length  of  denying  the  personality  and 

individuality  of  God,  it  is  by  way  of  compensation  inclined  to 

attribute  a  sort  of  individuality  to  the  world.     In 

Pantheism.  rr  t  /^      i   • 

ettect,  if  Lrod  is  present  in  every  atom  of  the  uni- 
verse, the  universe  is  a  veritable  living  being  possessing  an 
organic  unity,  and  developing,  like  an  embryo,  according  to  a 
determinate  law.  What  distinguishes  pantheism  from  this 
point  of  view  is,  therefore,  the  substantial  unity  that  it  as- 
scribes  to  the  world. 

But,  of  course,  pantheism  is  a  very  indefinite   doctrine,  sus- 
ceptible of  many  interpretations  according  to  the  manner  in 

which  the  universal  energy,  the  omnipresent 
of  panthdsin™^    unity,  and  in  especial,  the  fundamental  ground  of 

its  activity,  which  some  regard  as  determinism 
simply  and  others  as  the  orderly  achievement  of  a  final  cause, 
are  conceived.      Nay,  more  ;  both   necessity  and  the  orderly 


454  NON-RELIGION  OF   THE  FUTURE. 

achievement  of  a  final  cause  may  be  conceived  optimistically 
or  pessimistically. 

/.     Optimistic  pantheis^n. 

The  first  kind  of  pantheism,  then,  that  which  conceives  a 
single  substance  as  developing  in  an  infinity  of  modes  with  no 
final  cause  in  view,  may  be  typified  by  the  purely 
pmozism.  intellectualistic  pantheism  of  Spinoza.  This  doc- 
trine shows  us,  as  existing  in  the  totality  of  things,  the  imma- 
nent logic  which  presides  over  its  development.  The  essence 
of  human  nature  is  reason,  since  reason  is  the  essence  of  man. 
The  proper  function  of  reason  is  understanding,  and  to  under- 
stand is  to  perceive  the  necessity  of  things,  and  the  necessity 
of  things  is  nature,  or,  if  you  will,  God.  Reason  serves  no 
other  purpose  than  to  enable  us  to  understand  ;  and  the  soul, 
in  so  far  as  it  employs  reason,  regards  that  alone  as  useful 
which  leads  to  understanding.  To  conceive  the  absolute 
necessity  of  eternal  nature  is  to  conceive  that  which,  being 
subject  only  to  the  law  of  its  own  being,  is  free ;  it  is,  there- 
fore, to  conceive  eternal  freedom.  And  by  that  very  fact  it 
is  to  participate  in  eternal  freedom,  to  identify  itself  with 
it.  A  consciousness  of  necessity  is  thus  one  with  the  fact  of 
freedom.  Human  thought  thus  identifies  itself  with  divine 
thought  and  becomes  a  consciousness  of  eternity.  This  con- 
sciousness, which  is  supreme  joy,  is  love  of  God.  The  mystic 
Hebrew  and  Christian  idea  thus  proves  one  with  the  moral 
theories  of  antiquity  in  Spinoza's  vast  synthesis.  Intellectual 
intuition  is  self-conscious  nature;  the  intellectual  liberty,  as 
the  Stoics  taught  it,  is  consciousness  of  necessity,  and  nature 
possessing  itself ;  and  mystic  ecstasy,  by  which  the  individual  is 
absorbed  in  universal  being,  is  nature  returning  to  itself  and 
rediscovering  its  eternal  existence  beneath  its  passing  modes.' 

The  objection  that  moral  and  religious  philosophy  urged, 
and  always  will  urge,  against  Spinoza's  pantheism,  considered 
as  a  possible  substitute  for  religion,  is  that  it  is  an  optimistic 
fatalism,  that  regards  everything  as  achieved  by  the  mechani- 
cal and  brutal  operation  of  efificient  causes,  and  excludes  the 

'  See  the  chapter  on  Spinoza  in  the  author's  Morale  d' Epicure,  p.  230. 


PANTHEISM.  455 

possibility  of  any  conception   of    final  cause  or  of  progress, 
properly  so  called.     The  evolution  of  the  modes  of  substance, 

even  when  it  results  in  pain,  death,  and  vice,  is 
An  optimistic      ^iyine  ;  and  the  question  arises,  why  this  universe, 

which  is  alleged  to  be  perfect  and  incapable  of 
progress,  should  not  be  wholly  motionless,  and  why  this  eter- 
nal, aimless  agitation  in  the  bosom  of  absolute  substance  should 
exist? 

In  Mr.  Fiske's  judgment,  Spinozism  is  the  only  pantheism, 
properly  so  called.     The  remark  seems  to  us  unduly  to  restrict 

„. ,  ,    ,  the   application  of  the  term.      Every  system  of 

Fiske's  theory        .     .        ^  .  _ 

of  a  dramatic  theism  that  involves  the  notion  of  a  final  cause 
movement  in  the     tends    to    become     pantheistic    when    it    denies 

universe.  ^ 

the  transcendence  and  admits  the  organic  unity 
of  the  universe,  which  is  the  Dens  vivens,  the  natjira  iiaturaiis, 
with  a  law  of  progress  which  is  superior  to  the  necessary  laws 
of  pure  logic  and  mathematics  and  mechanics.  The  exclusion 
of  any  notion  of  the  immanence  of  a  final  cause  in  things  is 
not  essential  to  pantheism.  One  might  even  conceive  a  sort 
of  moral  pantheism  which  should  recognize  a  certain  moral 
significance  in  the  world,  or  at  least  what  Mr.  Fiske  him- 
self calls  a  dramatic  tendency  toward  a  moral  denouement. 
The  instant  men  feel  it  to  be  a  god  that  is  labouring  in  the 
universe,  they  feel,  rightly  or  wrongly,  reassured  as  to  the 
destiny  of  the  moral  ideal ;  they  feel  that  they  have  an  aim  to 
march  toward,  and  seem  to  hear,  in  the  shadow  of  things,  a 
multitude  marching  with  them.  They  no  longer  have  a  sense 
of  the  vanity  of  life ;  all  life,  on  the  contrary,  becomes  divine, 
if  not  as  it  is,  at  least  as  it  tends  to  be  and  ultimately  will  be. 
This  system,  according  to  its  partisans,  may  be  regarded  as 
an  induction  which  is  justified  by  the  modern  doctrine  of  evo- 
lution. ]\Ir.  Fiske  even  goes  the  length  of  saying 
Criticised.  ,  t^         •    .  ,  ,  ,  \- 

that   Darwmism    has  done  as  much    to  confirm 

theology  as  to  weaken  it.  Unhappily,  nothing  is  more  prob- 
lematic than  such  an  interpretation  of  modern  science.  Science 
reveals  no  element  of  divinity  in  the  universe,  and  the  process 
of  evolution,  which  results  in  the  incessant  construction  and 
destruction  of  similar  worlds  in  an  endless  round,  moves  toward 


456  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

no  conscious  or  unconscious  natural  end,  so  far  as  we  can  dis- 
cover. Scientifically,  therefore,  the  notion  of  a  final  cause  of 
the  universe  may  be  no  more  than  a  human  conception,  than 
a  bit  of  abstract  anthropomorphism.  No  scientific  induction 
can  justify  one  in  ascribing  to  the  universe  as  such  a  conscious 
purpose.  And  it  is  equally  rash  to  conceive  the  universe  as  a 
whole  possessing  a  psychical  and  moral  unity,  since  the  uni- 
verse, as  science  reveals  it  to  us,  is  an  infinity  in  no  sense 
grouped  about  a  centre.  Materially  speaking,  the  universe 
may  perhaps  be  regarded  as  the  expression  of  a  single  power, 
but  not  as  possessing  any  moral  or  psychic  unity.  Whatever  is 
organized,  living,  feeling,  thinking,  is,  so  far  as  we  know,  finite, 
and  the  equivalence  of  forces  in  the  universe  possesses  nothing 
in  common  with  the  centralization  of  these  forces.  It  is,  per- 
haps, precisely  because  the  forces  of  the  universe  are  not  mov- 
ing in  the  same  direction  that  the  struggle  and  contest  which 
are  the  life  of  the  world  exist.  Who  knows  but  that  for  the 
universe  to  become  a  unity  and  a  total  would  involve  its 
becoming  finite,  involve  the  acquisition  of  a  centre,  and  by 
that  very  fact,  perhaps,  of  a  circumference  which  would  arrest 
the  eternal  expansion  of  matter  and  life  in  infinite  space. 

What  constitutes  the  charm  of  pantheism,  for  a  number  of 

its  followers,  is  precisely  this  conception  of  unity  in  the  world; 

but   when  one  endeavours  to  make  the  concep- 

No  unity  in  the    ^.  ••,  ,.   i.\^    i.    •  ^      \ i.- 

so-oaiieduniverse.  tion  precise,  it  proves  so  evanescent  that  it  ulti- 
mately resolves  itself  into  the  absolute  indeter- 
mination  of  Hegelian  Non-Being.  The  more  one  examines 
it,  the  more  one  asks  one's  self  whether  the  unity  that  panthe- 
ism ascribes  to  the  universe  is  not  as  purely  a  bit  of  anthropo- 
morphism as  is  the  design  that  pantheism  attributes  to  the 
universe.  The  character  of  definiteness  and  of  totality  that 
the  universe  seems  to  possess  may  be  simply  a  form  that  the 
human  mind  imposes  upon  the  world  of  experience.  Project 
on  a  wall — the  wall  of  Plato's  cavern — shadows  of  numberless 
confused  objects,  of  revolving  atoms  and  formless  clouds,  and 
they  will  all  fall  into  some  certain  figure  ;  will  look  like  the  fan- 
tastic shadow  of  certain  human  constructions:  will  present 
the    outline    of    towers   and  cities,   animals    and    what   not.y 


PANTHEISM.  457 

The  unity  and  figure  of  the  world  are  perhaps  simply  of  the 
same  nature.  Apart  from  our  conception  of  it,  the  world  is 
perhaps  infinite,  and  infinity  can  never  mean  anything  else  to  the 
human  mind  than  formlessness,  for  we  are,  by  the  very  nature 
of  the  case,  unable  to  describe  its  contours.  The  unity  of 
the  world  is  perhaps  realized  only  in  our  minds  ;  it  is,  per- 
haps, only  from  our  minds  that  the  mass  of  things  obtain 
such  unity  as  they  seem  to  possess.  Neither  the  world  nor 
humanity  are  totals  except  in  so  far  as  we  think  of  them  as 
such,  and  act  upon  them,  and  group  them  about  our  thought 
and  action  as  a  centre. 

To  sum  up,  if  the  need  of  unity  seems  to  justify  pantheism, 

this  need  receives,  at  least,  but  an  illusory  satisfaction  in  the 

two  principal  forms  of  pantheism,  and,  in  espe- 

Summary.  ...  ,  ,  .    .     .        ,  i- .  i  , 

cial,  m  the  determmistic  form.  hither  the 
primordial  and  finite  unity  of  the  world  is  abstract  and 
indeterminate  and  therefore  purely  subjective ;  or  it  becomes 
determinate  in  attributes  which  are  as  human  as  those  of  the 
god  of  atheism.  The  will  which  Schopenhauer  makes  the 
basis  of  his  system  is  either  the  human  will  or  simply  force 
(which  itself  is  human  or  animal),  or  the  sense  of  effort,  or, 
finally,  pure  abstraction.  The  same  is  true  of  the  eternal 
force  which  Mr.  Spencer  regards  as  immanent  in  the  universe. 
Such  conceptions  are  more  meagre  in  content  but  not  neces- 
sarily more  objective  than  those  of  the  God  of  love,  the 
World-Spirit,  the  World-Thought. 

//.  Pessimistic  pantheism. 

Pantheism  has  travelled  from  Spinoza's  optimism  to  Schopen- 
hauer's pessimism;  its  most  recent  form,  and  in  some  respects 
one  of  its  most  ancient  forms.     The  pessimistic 

ressimisni, 

interpretation  of  religions  with  death  or  Nirvana 
regarded  as  the  redemption,  is  making  incessant  progress  in 
Germany.  Pascal  long  ago  said  :  "  Of  all  creatures  that  inhabit 
the  earth,  the  Christian  alone  avoids  pleasure  and  willingly 
embraces  pain."  Germany,  after  having  resuscitated  Bud- 
dhism with  Schopenhauer,  Von  Hartmann,  Bahnsen,  is  in  a 
fair  way  to  supply   us  with  a  sort  of   pessimistic  edition  of 


458  NOX-RELIGION  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

Christianity  which  will  far  outdo  Pascal.     But  for  evil  and  sin, 
religion  would  not  have  existed,  Von  Hartmann  thinks,  and 
as  evil  is  of  the  essence  of  existence  annihilation  is  the  sole 
salvation   possible.     Bahnsen,    in    his   philosophy    of   despair 
reaches  an  analogous  conclusion.     The  most  interesting  repre- 
sentative   of   the    new   doctrine  is  Philipp    Mainlaender,    the 
author  of  the  "  Philosophy  of  the  Redemption  "  (Die  Philoso- 
phie  der  Erclosing).     He  was  the  son  of  parents  of  an  exalted 
piety,  and  grandson  of  a  mystic  who  died  of  nervous  fever  in 
his  jiirty-third  year,   and    brother    of    another    mystic    who, 
on    his    arrival    in    India,    was  converted    to    Buddhism    and 
died  soon  after,  exhausted  by  the  intensity  of  his  mental  life. 
Mainlaender  found  his  Damascus  in  Italy;  the  heavens  opened 
upon  him  in  a  bookshop  in  Naples  where  he  discovered  the 
writings  of   Schopenhauer.     After  having  composed  his  sys- 
tem of  pessimistic  philosophy,  he  supervised  the  printing  of 
the  first  volume,  and  the  day  he  received  his  first  copy  (March 
31,    1876)  he   hanged    himself.'     The  sincerity  of  this  pessi- 
mist's conviction  cannot  be  denied,  nor  the  power  of  abstract 
ideas  implanted  on  a  brain   prepared    for  them   by  heredity, 
and  by  the  intellectual  tendencies  of  the  times.     Mainlaender 
regarded  philosophy  as  some  day  destined  to  replace  religion, 
but  the  philosophy  is  to  be  pessimistic  ;  Mainlaender  declared 
himself  a  Christian   even  while   he  was  founding  a  scientific 
system    of    atheism.      Freedom    to    commit    suicide    is   the 
modern  substitute  for  the  beautiful   illusion   of  immortality. 
Salvation  by  death  will,  Mainlaender  thought,  take  the  place 
of  salvation  by  eternal  life.     The  tree  of  science  will  thus  be- 
come the  legendary  fig-tree  of  Timon  the  misanthrope,  the 
branches  of  which  were  weighted  every  morning  afresh  by  the 
bodies  of  the  dead,  who  had  come  in  search  of  oblivion  from 
„     ,  ,  ^        the  evil  of  life,  and  had  found  it  in  self-destruction. 

Must  find  the  ,  1       1  • 

causes  of  pessi-  I.  To  estimate  the  value  and  probable  duration 

™'™'  of  the  pessimistic  sentiment,  which  has  in  some 

cases  at  the  present  day  been  identified  with  the  religious  sen- 
timent, one  must  first  consider  its  causes. 

'  See  in  the  Revue  philo  sop  hi  que,  June,  1885,  an  article  by  M.  Arreat  on  Main- 
laender. 


PANTHEISM.  459 

Different    reasons    have    brought    about    this    transforma- 
tion  of    pantheism,   which   after   having  divinized   the   world, 
Th       wth  f     ^^°^^  inspires  the  individual  to  dream  fondly  on  his 
pantheistic  meta-    annihilation  and  reabsorption  into  the   unity  of 
P  ^^^^^'  things.     The  first  cause  is  the  progress  of  panthe- 

istic metaphysics.  After  having  adored  nature  as  the  product  of 
immanent  reason,  pantheists  have  come  to  regard  it  as  a  work  of 
immanent  unreason,  as  the  degeneration  of  an  indeterminate 
and  unconscious  unity  in  the  misery  and  conflict  of  phenomenal 
selves,  of  conscious  beings  condemned  to  suffering.  At  the  ^  '■y 
least,  nature  is  indifferent  to  man.  Eternal  force,  which  ,  so 
much  spoken  of  to-day,  is  no  more  comforting  and  reassuring  to 
us  than  eternal  substance.  Right  or  wrong,  the  metaphysical 
instinct,  which  is  identical  at  bottom  with  the  moral  instinct, 
demands  not  only  the  presence  of  life  in  all  things,  but  of  life 
in  pursuit  of  an  ideal  of  goodness  and  universal  sociality. 

I  was  lying  one  day  in  the  mountains,  stretched  on  the  grass  ; 

a  lizard  came  out  of  a  hole  and  mistook  my  motionless  body  for 

a  rock,  and  climbed  up  on   my  leg  and  stretched 

Persistence  of       ,  .  ,,  ,       ,      .         ,  ,^.  -  .. 

anthropomor-  riimseli  out  to  bask  m  the  sun.  Ihe  conndmg 
P^^™'  little    creature   lay   on    me    enjoying   the   light, 

untroubled  by  any  suspicion  of  the  relatively  powerful  stream 
of  life  which  was  flowing  noiselessly  and  amicably  beneath 
him.  And  I,  for  my  part,  began  to  look  at  the  moss  and  the 
grass  on  which  I  was  reposing,  and  the  brown  earth  and  the 
great  rocks  ;  was  I  not  myself,  after  all,  a  lizard  simply  as  com- 
pared with  the  great  world,  and  was  I  not  perhaps  a  victim 
of  the  same  mistake  ?  Was  there  not  a  secret  life  throbbing 
everywhere  about  me,  palpitating  beneath  my  feet,  sweeping 
forward  confusedly  in  the  great  totality  of  things?  Yes,  but 
what  difference  did  it  make  if  it  was  simply  the  blind  egoistic 
life  of  a  multitude  of  atoms,  each  striving  for  ends  of  its  own. 
Little  lizard,  why  have  I  not,  like  thee,  a  friendly  eye  in  the 
universe  to  watch  over  me  ? 

The  second  cause  of  contemporary  pessimism  is  the  rapid 
progress  of  positive  science,  and  the  revelations  it  is  making  in 
regard  to  the  natural  world.  The  movement  has  been  so  pre- 
cipitate, new  ideas  have  been  produced  with  such  rapidity,  that 


46o  NON-RELIGION   OF    THE  FUTURE. 

the  intelligence  has  found  it  difficult  to  adapt  itself  to  them  ; 
we  are  going  too  fast,  we  find  it  as  difficult  to  get  our  breath  as 
the  rider  of  a  runaway  horse,  or  an  aeronaut  swept 
sciencer"^"^^ °  away  at  a  dizzy  speed  by  the  wind.  Knowledge 
causes  thus,  at  the  present  epoch,  a  sense  of  dis- 
comfort which  is  due  to  a  disturbance  of  the  inner  equilibrium  ; 
consciousness  of  the  world,  so  joyous  in  its  beginnings  at  the 
time  of  the  Renaissance,  making  its  first  appearance  in  the 
midst  of  Rabelais'  uproarious  fun,  has  come  to  be  almost  mel- 
ancholy. We  have  not  yet  become  domesticated  in  the  infini- 
ties of  the  new  world  which  has  been  revealed  to  us,  and  we  feel 
a  little  lost ;  therein  lies  the  secret  of  the  melancholy  of  the 
present  epoch,  which  was  melodramatic  and  rapid  in  the  pages 
of  Chateaubriand  and  the  youngest  children  of  the  century; 
and  has  come  to  be  serious  and  reflective  in  the  pages  of  Leo- 
pardi  and  of  Schopenhauer  and  of  the  pessimists  of  the  present 
da}'.  In  India  the  Brahmans  are  distinguished  by  a  black 
point  between  their  eyes ;  our  men  of  science,  our  philoso- 
phers and  artists,  carry  this  black  point  on  their  foreheads. 

The  third  cause  of  pessimism,  which  results  from  the  two 
preceding,  is  the  suffering  caused  by  the  exaggerated  develop- 

Exa    erated       "^cr't    of  thought  at  the  present  day,  and  the  dis- 
deveiopment  of       proportionate  place  that  it  occupies  at  present  in 

°°^   '  human    life.     We   are    suffering   from    a    sort  of 

hypertrophy  of  the  intelligence.  Those  who  work  with  their 
brains,  who  meditate  upon  life  and  death,  who  philosophize, 
ultimately  experience  this  suffering;  and  the  same  is  true  of 
artists,  who  pass  their  life  in  endeavouring  to  realize  a  more  or 
less  inaccessible  ideal.  One  is  drawn  all  ways  at  once  by  the 
sciences  and  arts ;  one  wishes  to  devote  one's  self  simultaneously 
to  all  of  them,  and  one  is  obliged  to  choose.  One's  whole 
vitality  sets  in  toward  one's  brain ;  one  has  to  check  it,  to  beat 
it  back,  to  resign  one's  self  to  vegetating  instead  of  to  living! 
One  does  not  resign  one's  self — one  prefers  to  abandon  one's  self 
to  the  inner  fire  that  consumes  one.  One's  thoughts  gradually 
become  feebler,  the  nervous  system  becomes  irritable,  becomes 
feminine  ;  but  the  will  remains  virile,  is  always  on  the  stretch, 
unsatisfied,  and  the  result  is  an  eternal  struggle,  an  endless 


PANTHEISM.  461 

dissatisfaction  with  one's  self;  one  must  choose,  must  have 
muscles  or  nerves  ;  be  a  man  or  a  woman  ;  and  the  thinker  and 
artist  are  neither  the  one  nor  the  other.  If  by  a  simple 
immense  effort  we  could  but  express  the  world  of  sentiment 
and  thought  we  carry  within  us,  with  what  joy,  what  pleasure 
we  should  do  it ;  even  if  the  brain  should  be  torn  asunder  in 
the  process  !  But  we  must  give  it  out  by  small  fragments, 
squeeze  it  out  drop  by  drop,  submit  to  all  the  interruptions  of 
life,  and  little  by  little  the  organism  becomes  exhausted  in 
the  struggle  between  mind  and  body,  and  the  intelligence 
flickers  like  a  light  in  a  rising  wind,  until  the  spirit  is  van- 
quished and  the  light  goes  out. 

Modern  thought  is  not  only  more  clear-sighted  in  matters  of 

the  external  world,  but  also  in  matters  of  the  internal  world.* 

John    Stuart     Mill    maintained    that    introspec- 

effect clubfeet-      ^ion   and  the  progress  of  psychological  analysis 

ive  analysis  OQ       possess  a  certain  dissolving  force  that,  along  with 

the  emotions.  ,..,,.  .,  ,  -^,  , 

disillusionment,  induces  sadness.  We  come  to  be 
too  well  aware  of  the  source  of  our  feelings  and  the  details  of 
our  character;  what  an  antagonism  between  being  gifted 
enough  in  matters  of  philosophy  or  poetry  to  create  a  world 
to  one's  own  mind,  to  embellish  and  illuminate  the  real  world, 
and,  nevertheless,  being  too  analytic  and  introspective  to  profit 
by  the  pleasing  illusion  !  We  build  airy  palaces  of  cards  and 
are  the  first  to  blow  them  down.  W^e  are  without  pity  for  our 
own  hearts,  and  sometimes  wonder  whether  Ave  should  not 
have  been  better  off  without  them  ;  we  are  too  transparent  to 
our  own  eyes,  we  see  the  hidden  springs  of  our  own  activity, 
we  have  no  sincere  faith  in  objective  reality,  nor  faith  enough 
in  the  rationality  of  our  own  joys  to  enable  them  to  attain 
their  maximum. 

At  the  same  time  that  the  intelligence  is  becoming  more 
penetrating  and    reflective  with    the  progress  of  knowledge, 
sensibility    of     every    kind    is    becoming     more 
^Vl"t^°^  delicate;    even  sympathy,  according  to  the  pes- 

simist, is  coining  to  be  an  instrument  of  torture 
by  annexing  the  suffering  of  others  in  addition  to  our 
own.     The  echo  and  reverberation  in  us  of  the  sufferings  of 


462  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

Other  people,  growing  with  the  growing  sociality,  seem  to 
be  ereater  than  the  echo  and  reverberation  in  us  of  human 
joys.  Social  needs  themselves,  which  have  been  so  magnified 
at  the  present  day,  are  so  far  from  being  satisfied  that  pessi- 
mists are  asking  whether  they  ever  can  be  satisfied  and 
whether  humanity  is  not  destined  to  become  simply  more 
numerous  in  the  struggle  for  existence,  and  more  wretched 
Und  more  conscious  of  its  wretchedness. 

And,  finally,  a  last  cause  of  pessimism  is  the  enfeeblement 

/of  the  will,   which  accompanies  an  exaltation  of  the  intelli- 

i  gence  and  the  sensibility.     Pessimism  is  in  some 

Depression  of  j^        metaphysical    suggestion    engendered  by 

vitality.  ,  ,  r-  ■ 

physical  and  moral  powerlessness.  Conscious- 
ness of  lack  of  power  produces  a  disesteem,  not  only  for  one's 
self,  but  for  everything;  a  disesteem  which,  in  certain  specu- 
lative minds,  must  inevitably  crystallize  into  a  priori  formulae. 
It  has  been  said  that  suffering  embitters  one ;  and  the  same 
is  true  in  an  even  greater  degree  of  a  sense  of  powerless- 
ness. Recent  psychological  observations  confirm  this  conclu- 
sion.' Among  the  insane,  and  among  hypnotic  subjects, 
periods  of  satisfaction  and  optimism,  which  are  periods  of 
benevolence  and  amenity,  coincide  with  a  heightened  muscu- 
lar power,  whereas  periods  of  discontent  and  malevolence 
coincide  with  a  state  of  depression  of  the  will  which  is  accom- 
panied by  a  lowering  of  the  muscular  powers,  sometimes  by 
one-half.  One  may  say,  with  M.  Frere,  that  people  in  good 
health,  at  the  maximum  of  their  muscular  vitality,  are  inces- 
santly disposed  to  estimate  the  world  in  terms  of  their  own 
vigour,  whereas  the  degenerate,  the  physically  or  mentally  en- 
feebled, are  incessantly  disposed  to  estimate  the  world  and  its 
possibilities  in  terms  of  their  own  slackness  and  incompetency. 
Add  that,  being  themselves  unequal  to  the  struggle  with  the 
universe,  it  seems  to  them,  by  a  natural  illusion,  that  the  uni- 
verse is  unequal  to  their  ideals  and  demands  upon  it ;  they 
fancy  that  it  is  they  that  tip  the  scale,  whereas  the  fact  is  pre- 
cisely the  opposite. 

In  all  the  experiments  in  hypnotism  a  sense  of  powerless- 
ness engenders  dissatisfaction ;   the  patient  who  finds  himself 

1  M.  Ch.  Frere,  Revue  philosophique,  July,  1886. 


PANTHEISM.  46s 

unable  to  obtain  possession  of  a  desired  object  endeavours  to 
explain  his  inability  by  seeking  in  the  object  itself  some  quality 
which  renders  it  repulsive.  We  are  inevitably  in- 
tweenVower-  clined  to  objectify  the  limitations  of  our  own  power 
lessness  and  instead  of  recognizing  them  for  what  they   are. 

pessimi    .  Once  started  in  this  path,  hypnotic  patients  would 

certainly,  if  they  were  competent,  go  the  length  of  construct- 
ing a  metaphysical  system  to  justify  their  state  of  mind.' 

Pessimism  thus  probably  originates,  for  the  individual,  in  a 
sense  of  lack  of  power.     Sometimes  this  sense  possesses  indis- 

.  putably  a  certain  element  of  universality  ;   a  con- 

Sense  of  power-     r  J  J  ' 

lessness  destined  sciousness  of  the  limits  of  human  power,  as  of 
to  increase,  human   intelligence,  must  as  inevitably  increase 

by  the  very  progress  of  our  knowledge  and  capacity.  Pessi- 
mism is  not,  therefore,  pure  madness,  nor  pure  vanity  ;  or,  if  it 
is  madness,  the  madness  is  natural,  and  is  induced  sometimes 
by  nature  itself.  At  certain  periods  nature  seems  to  go  in- 
sane, to  revel  in  folly,  although  the  power  of  logic,  which  is 
identical  in  the  last  resort  with  the  overruling  principle  of 
things,  always  has  the  last  word  in  the  universe,  as  it  ought 
to  have  also  in  the  human  mind. 

To  sum  up:    in  this  century  of  transition,  of  religious  and 
moral  and  social  transformation,  of  reflection  and  dissolving 
analysis,    causes   of   suffering    are  abundant   and 
ummary.       ultimately  assume   the   guise   of   motives  of    de- 
spair.     Every  new  step  in  intelligence  and  sensibility  brings 
new    modes    of    suffering  within   our    reach.      The    desire   of 

'  A  woman  somnambulist  was  induced  to  believe  that  she  could  not  lift  her  wor- 
sted neckerchief  off  the  back  of  a  chair  ;  her  shoulders  were  cold  and  she  wanted 
it ;  she  put  out  her  hand,  and  finding  herself  unable  to  overcome  the  subjective  ob- 
stacle, she  translated  it  into  the  outer  world  and  declared  that  the  neckerchief  was 
unclean,  or  of  an  offensive  colour,  etc.,  and  ultimately  became  violently  terrified. 
Another  subject,  also  a  woman,  was  persuaded  that  she  could  not  pull  open  a  drawer; 
she  touched  the  button  and  then  let  go  of  it  shivering,  and  exclaiming  that  it  was 
cold.  "  No  wonder,"  she  added,  as  a  rational  justification  of  her  repulsion,  "  it  is 
of  iron  !  "  She  was  given  an  iron  compass  ;  she  endeavoured  to  handle  it,  but  soon 
dropped  it.  "  Vou  see,"  she  said,  "  it  is  as  cold  as  the  handle,  I  cannot  hold  it." 
Thus  the  objective  explanation  of  a  subjective  fact,  once  entertained,  tends  by 
force  of  logic  to  become  general,  to  include  a  whole  class  of  similar  phenomena,  to 
become  a  system,  and,  if  need  be,  a  cosmological  and  metaphysical  system. 


464  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

knowledge,  in  especial,  which  is  the  most  dangerous  of  all 
human  desires,  because  the  object  of  it  is  really  infinite,  be- 
comes every  day  more  insatiable  and  enslaves  not  only  iso- 
lated individuals,  but  entire  nations;  it  is  the  desire  of 
knowledge  that  is  the  disease  of  the  century,  a  disease  which 
is  growing,  and  becoming  for  the  philosopher  the  disease  of 
humanity.  The  seat  of  the  disease  is  in  the  head  ;  it  is  the 
brain  of  mankind  that  is  attacked.  We  are  far  from  the  na- 
ivete of  primitive  people,  who,  when  they  are  asked  for  the 
seat  of  thought,  point  to  the  stomach  or  the  bosom  !  We  are 
well  aware  that  we  think  with  our  heads,  for  it  is  in  our  heads 
that  we  suffer  from  a  preoccupation  with  the  unknown,  with 
the  ideal,  with  an  incessant  endeavour  to  overtake  the  progress 
of  a  winged  and  devouring  thought.  On  the  mountains  of 
Tartary  one  sometimes  sees  a  strange  animal  pass  through  the 
morning  mist  at  a  breathless  speed ;  its  eyes  are  those  of  a 
frightened  antelope,  and  while  it  gallops  with  a  foot  that 
trembles  as  it  strikes  the  soil,  two  great  wings  stretch  out 
from  the  sides  of  its  head  and  seem  on  the  point  of  lifting  it 
from  the  ground  each  time  that  they  pulsate.  It  sweeps 
down  the  valleys,  and  its  path  is  marked  by  traces  of  blood, 
and  suddenly  it  falls,  and  the  two  great  wings  rise  from  the 
body,  and  an  eagle,  which  was  feeding  leisurely  upon  its  brain, 
takes  its  way  off  into  the  sky. 

II.  Is  pessimism   curable?     A   sense   of  evil  constitutes  a 

legitimate  element  in  the  metaphysical  or  religious  sentiment ; 

T        •  ■  but  is  that  a  sufficient  reason  for  recognizing  it 

Is  pessimism  °  ° 

the  last  word  of  not  simply  as  a  part,  but  as  the  whole  of  meta- 
philosophy?  physics  and  of  religion  ?     Such  is  the  problem. 

Von  Hartmann  has  endeavoured  to  discover  in  all  religion  a 

basis  of  pessimism.     To  do  so  is  to  judge  all  humanity  too 

narrowly,  according  to  one's   observation  of  it  at 

Pessimism  only    ^j       present  day.     To   maintain  that   religion  is 

part  of  the  truth.  ^  ^  1  1  re        • 

founded  on  a  radical  pessimism  is  like  atlirmmg 
that  medicine  is  based  not  on  a  theory  of  the  curability,  but 
of  the  incurability  of  disease.  Schopenhauer's  pessimism,  like 
Spinoza's  optimism,  contains,  no  doubt,  a  certain  indestructible 
element  of  truth,  but  immensely  overstated  and  magnified.    If 


OF  THF     '^y^ 
UNIVERSITY 

science  cannot  regard  the  world  as  divine,  neither  can  it  regard 
the  world  as  diabolical.  There  is  no  more  ground  for  cursing 
the  objective  universe  than  for  adoring  it.  And  the  subjective 
causes  of  unhappiness,  which  we  have  analyzed,  are  provisional 
simply.  Human  knowledge,  which  at  present  is  so  consider- 
able in  its  dimensions  that  it  actually  embarrasses  the  brain, 
may  well  come  to  be  so  organized  (as,  indeed,  in  some  cases, 
it  is  even  now)  that  it  will  produce  a  sense  of  well-being  and  of 
largeness  of  life  only.  There  is  need,  however,  for  a  wholly 
new  science,  that  of  intellectual  hygiene,  of  intellectual  thera- 
peutics, a  science  which,  once  created,  might  prevent  or  cure 
the  mental  depression  which  seems  to  result  from  exaggerated 
nervous  excitation,  such  as  pessimism  seems  to  be  incidental 
to,  and  such  as  Greece  was  unacquainted  with. 

For  the  rest,  the  desire  of  knowledge,  which  is,  as  we  have 

seen,  among  the  most  profound  of  the  desires  of  the  century, 

may  become    the   source    of,  perhaps,  the   most 

Eesignation.  ,  ,  •    r    n-i  i  r 

trustworthy  and   most   infallible  cure  for  a  great 

number  of  human  ills.  Some  of  us,  certainly,  who  are  of  the 
physically  and  mentally  disinherited,  may  cry :  "  I  have  suffered 
in  all  my  joys."  Nescio  quid  ainari  was  present  for  us  in  the 
first  draught  of  pleasure,  in  the  first  smile,  in  the  first  kiss,  and 
yet  the  present  life  is  not  without  its  sweetness  when  we  do 
not  rebel  against  it,  when  it  is  rationally  accepted.  What 
makes  up  for  the  bitterness  of  knowledge  is  the  definiteness 
and  clearness  that  it  lends  to  the  world.  As  science  becomes 
more  perfect  it  may  some  day  inspire  the  soul  with  something 
of  the  serenity  that  is  everywhere  incidental  to  unfaltering 
clear  light.  Therein  lies  the  secret  of  Spinoza's  intellectual 
calm.  If  his  objective  optimism  is  indefensible,  his  subjective 
optimism  is  not  without  an  aspect  of  truth  in  the  conscious- 
ness of  inner  peace  that  belongs  to  breadth  of  intelligence  and 
harmony  of  thought. 

So  far  as  introspection  is  concerned,  and  the  dissolving  force 
it  exercises  upon  our  joys,  introspection  is  destructive,  really, 
of  none  but  irrational  joys,  and  by  way  of  compensation,  it 
is  destructive  also  of  irrational  griefs.  Truth  resists  analysis; 
it  is  our  business  to  seek  in  truth  not  only  for  the  beautiful, 


466  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

but  for  the  good.     Take  it  all  in  all,  there  is  as  much  solid 

and  enduring  truth  in  enlightened  love  of  family,  of  country, 

.    ,    .   ,  of  humanity,  as  in  the  most  unquestionable  scien- 

Analysis  de-  -^     _  _  _ 

stroys  irrational  tific  fact,  or  in  Certain  physical  laws,  like  that 
joys  only.  ^j  gravitation.     The  great  remedy  for  excessive 

analysis,  such  as  Amiel,  for  example,  suffered  from,  is  a  little 
to  forget  one's  self,  to  widen  one's  horizon,  and,  above  all,  to  do 
something.  Action,  by  its  very  nature,  is  a  realized  synthesis, 
a  decision  which  necessitates  the  solution  of  a  certain  number 
of  problems,  or  the  recognition  that  their  solution  is  not  indis- 
pensable. Action  is  something  too  trenchant  and  provisional, 
no  doubt,  but  men  must  remember  that  they  live  in  the  pro- 
visional and  not  the  eternal,  and  that  of  their  life,  after  all, 
what  is  least  provisional  is  action,  motion,  the  vibration  of  an 
atom,  the  undulation  which  traverses  the  great  whole.  Whoever 
lives  immersed  in  the  conduct  of  life  has  no  time  for  self-pity 
or  self-dissection.  Other  forms  of  oblivion  are  involuntary 
and  sometimes  lie  beyond  one's  power,  but  one  may  always 
forget  one's  self.  The  cure  for  all  the  sufferings  of  the  m.odern 
brain  lies  in  an  enlargement  of  the  heart. 

It  has  been  urged,  it  is  true,  that  we  suffer  increasingly  from 
a  growing  sympathy  and  pity  for  each  other.     The  problem  of 
m,       ,,  individual    happiness,    owing    to    the    increasing 

of  distribution  sense  of  the  solidarity  of  mankind,  is  more  than 
0  wea    ,  ever  dependent  to-day  upon  the  happiness  of  so- 

ciety at  large.  Not  only  our  immediate  and  personal  griefs, 
but  the  griefs  of  other  people,  of  society,  of  humanity,  present 
and  to  come,  influence  us.  So  be  it.  To  discuss  the  future 
would  be  endless.  We  have  not  Macbeth's  privilege  of  being 
brought  face  to  face  with  the  file  of  future  generations,  and 
cannot  read  in  advance  the  destiny  of  our  descendants  in  their 
faces.  The  mirror  of  human  life  shows  us  nothing  but  an 
image  of  ourselves,  and  in  this  image  we  are  inclined,  like  the 
poets,  to  emphasize  the  lines  of  pain.  The  labour  problem, 
which  at  present  distresses  us,  is  infinitely  complex  ;  but  we 
believe  that  the  optimists  have  even  more  right  to  regard  it 
with  tranquillity  than  the  pessimists  have  to  declare  it  insol- 
uble ;   in  especial  when  one  considers  that   it  has  assumed  a 


PANTHEISM.  467 

threatening  aspect  only  during  something  like  the   last  half 

century. 

The  labour  problem  involves  two  distinct  questions,  one  of 

them  relating  to  a  conflict  of  interests,  the   other  to  a  conflict 

of  intentions.     We  believe  that  the  strictly  eco- 
How  the  eco-  -  11  •  1 1  ,  <  11, 

nomichaifofthe     "omic    problem    Will    one    day    be  solved   by   a 

problem  will  be  simultaneous  increase  in  the  difficulty  of  the 
dealt  with.  .  •    1     •  •  1    •         1       1 

industrial  situation  and  in  the  knowledge  of  how 

to  deal  with  it,  which  will  lead  the  well-to-do  classes  to  per- 
ceive that  by  endeavouring  to  save  everything  they  are  running 
the  risk  of  losing  everything,  and  will  lead  the  lower  classes  to 
perceive  that  by  endeavouring  to  obtain  too  much  they  are 
running  the  risk  of  gaining  nothing  and  of  seeing  society's 
coveted  wealth  melt  away  before  their  eyes,  and  that  dividing 
capital  is  like  dividing  a  germ,  and  results  in  sterilization. 
The  remedy  for  socialism  lies  in  science — even  though  the 
first  effect  of  a  wider  dissemination  of  knowledge  would  be 
to  increase  the  strength  of  socialism.  Out  of  the  very  intens- 
ity of  the  crisis  the  solution  will  come.  The  moment  different 
interests  are  completely  conscious  of  their  real  points  of  antag- 
onism, they  are  close  upon  a  compromise.  War  is  never  the 
result  of  anything  but  an  incomplete  knowledge  of  the  com- 
parative powers  and  respective  interests  of  the  opposing 
parties;  people  fight  when  they  can  no  longer  calculate,  and 
the  march  of  armies  and  pitched  battles  may  themselves  be 
regarded  as  a  sort  of  higher  arithmetic. 

When  it  has  once  come  to  be  understood  that  there  is  no 

fundamental  conflict  of  interest  between  the  classes,  the  sense 

of  antagonism  between  them  will  gradually  dimin- 

willsm^™ft°  If  '^^'  '^^^^  most  reassuring  promise  of  a  complete 
solution  of  the  industrial  problem  lies  in  human 
sociality.  All  asperity  of  temper  in  the  matter  will  be  smoothed 
away  by  the  incontestable  growth  of  sympathy  and  altruism. 
If  sympathy,  love,  labour  in  common,  recreation  in  com- 
mon, sometimes  seem  to  augment  the  pains  of  life,  they 
more  than  proportionately  augment  the  joys.  Moreover,  as 
is  well  known,  to  share  trouble  is  to  lessen  it;  sympathy  is 
itself  a  pleasure  ;  poets  know  it,  dramatic  poets  in  especial ;  even 


468  NON- RELIGION  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

wlicn  pity  is  accompanied  by  a  lively  realization  of  another's 

pain  it  nevertheless  induces  love,  and  to  that  extent  still  pre- 

j         J  J  •     serves  a  certain    charm.     That  creature   suffers, 

Love  and  admira-  _         _        ' 

tion  the  panacea  therefore  I  lo\'e  it;  and  there  are  infinite  joys 
or  pessimism.  -^^  love;  it  multiplies  the  value  of  life  in  one's 
own  eyes,  by  giving  it  a  value  in  the  eyes  of  other  people,  a 
social  value,  which  is  in  the  best  sense  a  religious  value.  Man, 
Wordsworth  says,  lives  in  admiration,  hope,  and  love,  but  he 
who  possesses  admiration  and  love  will  always  possess  an 
abundance  of  hope.  He  who  loves  and  admires  will  possess 
the  lightness  of  heart  that  carries  one  through  the  day  without 
fatigue.  Love  and  admiration  are  the  great  remedies  of 
despair.  Love,  and  you  will  wish  to  live.  Whatever  may  be 
the  value  of  life  from  the  point  of  view  of  sensibility — knowl- 
edge and  action,  and  principally  action  in  behalf  of  another, 
will  always  constitute  reasons  for  living.  And  it  is  mainly 
one's  reasons  for  living  that  justify  one's  tenacity  of  life. 

Pessimism  sees  only  the  sensitive  side  of  life;  but  life  pre- 
sents also  an  active  and  an  intellectual  side ;  over  and  above 
the  agreeable  there  exist  the  great,  the  beautiful, 

opSTllnTion!'  ^"*^  ^^^^  generous.  Even  from  the  mere  point  of 
view  of  pleasure  and  pain,  pessimism  is  based  on 
calculations  which  are  as  open  to  discussion  as  Bentham's 
hedonistic  arithmetic.  We  have  seen  elsewhere '  that 
happiness  and  unhappiness  are  ex  post  facto  mental  con- 
structions that  are  based  upon  a  multitude  of  optical  illu- 
sions. Even  the  disillusionment  of  pessimism  is  itself  a  sort 
of  an  illusion. 

Leopardi  hit  upon  an  ingenious  empirical  argument  in  favour 
of  pessimism  in  his  dialogue  between  an  almanac  seller  and  a 
passer-by : 

Almanac  Seller.  Almanacs !  New  almanacs  !  New  calen- 
dars !     Who  wants  new  almanacs? 

Passer-by.  Almanacs  for  the  new  year? 

Alinafiac  Seller.  Yes,  sir. 

Passer-by.  Do  you  think  this  year  will  be  a  happy  one? 

Almanac  Seller.  Yes,  to  be  sure,  sir. 

'  Esquisse  (Tune  morale  sans  obligation  ni  sanction,  p.  Sg. 


PANTHEISM.  469 

Passer-by.  As  happy  as  last  year? 

Almanac  Seller.  Much  more  so. 

Passer-by.  As  the  year  before? 

Almanac  Seller.  Still  more  so,  sir. 

Passer-by.  Why,  should  you  not  like  the  new  year  to  re- 
semble one  of  the  past  two  years  ? 

Almanac  Seller.  No,  sir,  I  should  not. 

Passer-by.  How  many  years  have  gone  by  since  you  began 
to  sell  almanacs? 

Almatiac  Seller.  About  twenty  years,  sir. 

Passer-by.  Which  of  the  twenty  should  you  wish  the  new 
year  to  be  like  ? 

Almanac  Seller.  I  do  not  know. 

Passer-by.  Do  you  not  remember  any  particular  year  which 
you  thought  a  happy  one  ? 

Almanac  Seller.  Indeed,  I  do  not,  sir. 

Passer-by.  And  yet  life  is  a  fine  thing,  is  it  not  ? 

Almanac  Seller.  So  they  say. 

Passer-by.  Should  you  not  like  to  live  those  twenty 
years,  and  even  all  your  past  life  from  your  birth,  over 
again  ? 

Almanac  Seller.  Ah,  dear  sir,  would  to  God  that  I  could ! 

Passer-by.  But  if  you  had  to  live  over  again  the  life  you 
hav^e  already  lived,  with  all  its  pleasures  and  sufferings? 

Almanac  Seller.   I  should  not  like  that. 

Passer-by.  Then  what  other  life  would  you  like  to  live? 
Mine,  or  that  of  the  prince,  or  whose?  Do  you  not  think 
that  I,  or  the  prince,  or  anyone  else  would  reply  exactly  as 
you  have  done,  and  that  no  one  would  wish  to  repeat  the  same 
life  over  again  ? 

Almanac  Seller.  Yes,  I  believe  that  .  .  . 

Passer-by.  And  it  is  clear  that  each  person  is  of  opinion  that 
the  evil  he  has  experienced  exceeds  the  good  ;  .  .  .  but  with 
the  new  year  fate  will  commence  treating  you,  and  me,  and 
■everyone  well,  and  the  happy  life  will  begin  .  .  . 

Almanac  Seller.  Almanacs  I  New  almanacs!  New  calen- 
dars !  ■ 

*  Dialogue  cited  by  M.  Caro  in  Pessimisme. 


470  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

Many  of  us  no  doubt  would  reply  to  the  poet  as  the  almanac 
seller  did — we   should  not  wish  to  begin  our  life  over  again— 
„    .      ^  but  it  is  not  to  be  concluded  from  that  that  our 

novelty  in  the        past  life,  taken    as  a  whole,  has   been    unhappy 
univerBe.  rather  than  happy.     It  is  to  be  concluded  simply 

that  it  has  lost  its  novelty,  and  with  its  novelty  a  great  part  of 
its  charm.  Man,  in  effect,  is  not  a  purely  sensitive  being.  His 
pleasures  are,  so  to  speak,  not  blind.  He  not  only  enjoys,  he 
knows  that  he  enjoys,  and  knows  what  he  enjoys,  and  each  of 
his  sensations  constitutes  an  addition  to  his  treasures  of  knowl- 
edge. Having  once  begun  to  amass  this  treasure,  he  desires 
incessantly  to  augment  it,  though  he  cares  little  enough  futilely 
to  handle  and  to  contemplate  the  wealth  already  acquired.  Our 
past  life,  therefore,  is  to  some  extent  tarnished  and  deflowered. 
The  number  of  hours  that  were  so  rich,  so  full  that  we  could 
not  exhaust  them  at  the  time  and  desire  to  repeat  them,  is 
not  great ;  and,  barring  such  hours,  the  principal  charm  of  the 
rest  of  our  past  existence  lay  in  estimating  its  details,  in  com- 
paring them  with  each  other,  in  exercising  upon  them,  our 
intelligence  and  our  activity,  and  ...  lightly  passing  them  by  ; 
they  were  not  worth  lingering  over;  they  resembled  the  tracts 
of  country  that  the  traveller  does  not  feel  tempted  to  turn  and 
look  back  upon.  If  novelty  possesses  for  mankind  a  certain 
charm,  if  a  repetition  of  identically  similar  circumstances- 
rarely  affords  as  great  pleasure  the  second  time  as  the  first, 
the  fact  is  owing  in  part  to  the  very  laws  of  desire,  but  in  part 
to  the  superiority  of  the  human  mind  ;  the  desired  object 
should  always  offer  something  new  to  the  intelligence.  Every 
desire  contains  an  element  of  philosophic  and  aesthetic  curi^ 
osity  that  the  past  cannot  satisfy ;  the  flower  of  novelty  can- 
not be  gathered  twice  from  the  same  branch. 

But  Leopardi  might  reply.  What  is  the  charm  of  novelty  but 
an  illusion  ?  For  everything  on  earth  is  really  old  :  the 
future  is  but  a  repetition  of  the  past  and  ought 
novelt ^^'^'^^'^^  logically  to  be  as  repugnant  as  the  past.  Ab- 
stract formulae,  and  precipitate  inductions  like 
that,  offer  no  resistance  either  to  reason  or  to  experience. 
Whatever  pessimistic  poets  may  say  to  the  contrary,  nothing; 


PANTHEISM.  471 

is  a  repetition  of  anything  else,  either  in  human  life  or  in  the 
universe.  There  is  always  something  new  under  the  sun,  if  it 
be  no  more  than  the  budding  leaves  on  a  tree  or  the  changing 
colour  on  a  cloud.  No  two  sunsets  are  the  same.  Fairy-stories 
tell  of  a  marvellous  picture  book,  the  pages  of  which  one 
may  turn  forever  without  weariness,  for  the  instant  the  picture 
has  been  looked  upon  and  the  page  turned,  its  place  is  taken 
by  a  new  picture.  The  universe  is  such  a  book ;  when  one 
wishes  to  turn  back  to  a  familiar  page  it  is  no  longer  the  same 
nor  are  we  ourselves  the  same,  and  if  we  consider  the  matter 
narrowly,  the  world  should  always  possess  for  us  its  first 
freshness. 

The  distinctive  sign  of  a  really  superior,  really  human  intel- 
lect is  to  be  interested  in  everything  in  the  universe,  and  in 
the  difference  between  things.  When  we  look 
diffeSe'thV^  Straight  before  us  without,  properly  speaking, 
mark  of  high  seeing  anything,  we  perceive  resemblances  only; 
when  we  look  with  attention,  with  affectionate 
love  of  detail,  we  perceive  an  infinity  of  differences;  an  intel- 
lectual activity,  always  awake,  finds  everywhere  objects  of 
interest.  To  love  anything  is  to  find  in  it,  incessantly,  ele- 
ments of  novelty. 

When  pessimists  maintain  that  the  charm  of  the  future  is 
an  illusion,  it  may  be  retorted  that  the  illusion  is  theirs,  that 
The  world  they  do  not  look  at  the  world  closely  enough  to 

inexhaustibly  see  it  as  it  is,  and  do  not  love  it  because  they  do 
m  eres  ing.  ^^^  know  it.     If  one  could  view  the  Alps  from 

the  surface  of  a  passing  aerolite,  the  Rigi,  the  Faulhorn,  Mont 
Blanc.  Monte  Rosa  would  all  look  alike,  would  all  appear  to 
be  indifferent  points  on  the  earth's  rind ;  but  what  shall  be  said 
of  the  naive  traveller  who  confounds  them,  and  professes  to 
have  seen  the  whole  of  the  Alps  when  he  has  climbed  the 
Rigi?  Life,  also,  is  a  perpetual  ascent,  of  which  it  is  difificult 
to  say  one  has  seen  the  whole  because  one  has  climbed  the 
first  peak.  From  childhood  to  old  age,  the  horizon  grows 
larger  and  changes  and  is  always  new.  Nature  seems  to  re- 
peat itself  only  to  a  superficial  gaze.  Each  of  its  works  is 
original,  like  those  of  genius,     .^sthetically  or  intellectually 


472  NON-RELIGION  OF   THE  FUTURE. 

considered,  discouragement  is  voluntary  or  involuntary  blind- 
ness. If  poets  have  wished  to  forget  past  experiences  which 
were  too  painful,  even  in  memory,  no  true  scholar  or  man  of 
science  has  ever  expressed  the  desire  to  forget  what  he 
knew,  to  make  a  blank  space  in  his  intelligence,  to  reject 
the  knowledge  so  slowly  acquired — unless,  indeed,  it  were  for 
the  refined  pleasure  of  learning  it  all  over  again  and  of  owing 
nothing  to  the  labour  of  previous  generations.  Beneath  every 
human  desire,  we  repeat,  there  exi^s  this  thirst  for  truth; 
which  is  one  of  the  essential  elements  of  the  religious  senti- 
ment, and  all  other  desires  may  be  satiated  or  fatigued,  but 
this  one  still  subsists ;  one  may  be  weary  of  life  without 
being  weary  of  knowledge  ;  even  those  w-ho  have  been  most 
bitterly  wounded  by  the  conditions  of  life  may  still  accept 
them  for  the  light  that  the  intelligence  brings  them  at  the 
price  of  pain,  as  a  soldier,  whose  eyes  have  been  injured  by 
some  chance  splinter,  nevertheless  strains  them  beneath  his 
eyelids  to  follow  the  course  of  the  fight  about  him. 

In  effect,  the  analysis  that  pessimism  is  based  upon  is,  in 
many  respects,  superficial.     Even  the  word  pessimism   is  in- 
exact, for  the  doctrine  ascribes  no  progress  from 

Summary,  .  ... 

bad  to  worse,  from  pejtis  to  pessiviuni;  it  main- 
tains simply  that  the  world  is  bad  and  must  be  recognized  as 
such,  and  that  this  recognition   is  the   consequence  and  the 
condition  of  progress,  of  intellectual  power  and  of  knowledge. 
The  practical  rules  for  the  conduct  of  life  that  pessimism 
prescribes  from  its  principles  are  still  more  open  to  discussion. 
Granted  the  wretchedness  of  life,  the  remedy  that 
Suicide  as  ft         pessimists  propose  is  the  new  religious  salvation 

resource.  f  r      r  o 

that  modern  Buddhists  are  to  make  fashionable. 
This  novelty,  which  is  older  than  Sakya-Muni  itself,  is  one  of 
the  most  ancient  of  Oriental  ideas ;  it  to-day  proves  attractive 
to  a  number  of  Occidental  peoples,  as  it  has  several  times 
proved  attractive  to  them  in  former  days,  for  traces  of  it  may 
be  found  among  the  Neo-Platonists  and  the  Christian  mys- 
tics. The  conception  is  that  of  Nirvana.  To  sever  all  the  ties 
which  attach  you  to  the  external  world  ;  to  prune  away  all  the 
young  offshoots  of  desire,  and  recognize  that  to  be  rid  of  them 


PANTHEISM.  473 

is  a  deliverance ;  to  practice  a  sort  of  complete  psychical  cir- 
cumcision; to  recoil  upon  yourself  and  to  believe  that  by  so 
doing  you  enter  into  the  society  of  the  great  totality  of  things 
(the  mystics  would  say  of  God) ;  to  create  an  inner  vacuum, 
and  feel  dizzy  in  the  void  and,  nevertheless,  to  believe  that  the 
void  is  plentitude  supreme — IIAT^pwpi — these  have  always  con- 
stituted temptations  to  mankind ;  mankind  has  been  tempted 
to  meddle  with  them,  as  it  has  been  tempted  to  creep  up  to 
the  verge  of  dizzy  precipices  and  look  over.  The  panthe- 
istic or  monistic  notion  of  Nirvana  eludes  criticism  precisely 
because  it  is  void  of  all  precise  content.  Physiologically 
speaking.  Nirvana  corresponds  to  the  period  of  repose  and 
quietude  which  always  follows  a  period  of  tension  and  of 
effort.  One  cannot  stop  and  take  breath  in  the  eternal  for- 
ward march  that  constitutes  the  phenomenal  life  of  human- 
ity ;  it  is  good  sometimes  to  feel  lassitude,  it  is  good  a  little 
to  understand  the  comparative  cheapness  and  vanity  of  every- 
thing one  has  hitherto  attained,  but  good  only  on  condition 
that  such  an  understanding  of  our  past  constitutes  a  spur  to 
fresh  effort  in  the  future.  To  rest  content  with  lassitude — to 
believe  that  the  deepest  existence  is  the  meanest,  the  coldest, 
the  most  inert — is  equivalent  to  a  confession  of  defeat  in  the 
struggle  for  existence.  Nirvana  leads,  in  fact,  to  the  annihila- 
tion of  the  individual  and  of  the  race,  and  to  the  logical  ab- 
surdity that  the  vanquished  in  the  struggle  for  existence  are 
the  victors  over  the  trials  and  miseries  of  life. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  perform  a  practical  experiment  in 
Nirvana.     One  of  my  acquaintances  pushed  the  experiment  as 

^  .  ,  ,„.    -       far  as  a  European  of  scientific  tendencies  could. 

Trial  of  Nirvana,  ... 

He  practised  asceticism  to  the  point  of  reject- 
ing all  variety  in  his  diet,  he  gave  up  meat  (as  Mr.  Spencer 
also  did  for  some  time),  wine,  every  kind  of  ragout,  every  form 
of  condiment,  and  reduced  to  its  lowest  possible  terms  the 
desire  that  is  most  fundamental  in  every  living  being — the 
desire  of  food,  the  excitation  of  the  famished  animal  in 
the  presence  of  appetizing  dishes,  the  moment  of  heightened 
expectation  before  dinner  which  constitutes  for  so  many 
people  the  event  of  the  day.     For  the  protracted  meals  that 


474  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

are  customary,  he  substituted  a  certain  number  of  cups  of  pure 
milk.  Having  thus  blunted  his  sense  of  taste  and  the  grosser 
of  his  appetites,  having  abandoned  all  physical  activity,  he 
sought  to  find  a  recompense  in  the  pleasures  of  abstract  medi- 
tation, and  of  aesthetic  contemplation.  He  entered  into  a  state 
which  was  not  that  of  dreamland,  but  neither  was  it  that  of 
real  life,  with  its  definite  details.  What  gives  relief  and  out- 
line to  the  life  of  each  day,  what  makes  each  day  an  epoch  for 
us  in  our  existence,  is  the  succession  of  our  desires  and  our 
pleasures.  One  has  no  idea  what  a  blank  would  be  produced 
in  one's  existence  by  the  simple  omission  of  some  hundreds  of 
meals.  By  a  similar  process  of  elimination,  employed  in 
regard  to  pleasures  and  desires  generally,  he  secured  for  his 
life  a  certain  savourless,  colourless,  ethereal  charm.  The  whole 
universe  recoiled  by  degrees  into  the  distance,  for  the  universe 
was  composed  of  things  that  he  no  longer  came  into  forcible 
contact  with,  that  he  no  longer  handled  vigorously,  and  that, 
therefore,  came  less  violently  into  contact  with  him,  and  left 
him,  therefore,  more  indifferent  to  them.  He  entered  the 
cloud  in  which  the  gods  sometimes  envelop  themselves,  and 
no  longer  felt  the  firm  earth  beneath  his  feet,  but  he  soon 
found  that,  if  he  no  longer  stood  upon  firm  earth,  he  was  not 
on  that  account  the  nearer  heaven ;  what  struck  him  most  was 
the  enfeeblement  of  his  thoughts  precisely  at  the  time  when, 
owing  to  his  complete  detachment  from  all  material  cares,  he 
was  inclined  to  believe  himself  most  intellectually  competent. 
The  instant  that  thought  ceased  to  rest  upon  a  foundation  of 
solid  reality  it  became  incapable  of  abstraction  ;  the  life  of 
thought  as  of  our  whole  being  is  contrast,  and  it  gathers 
power  by  dealing  from  time  to  time  with  objects  which  seem 
least  readily  to  lend  themselves  to  its  purposes.  An  endeavour 
to  purify  and  to  sublimate  thought  robs  it  of  its  precision  ;  medi- 
tation gives  place  to  dream,  and  dream  gives  place  to  the  ecstasy 
in  which  mystics  lose  all  sense  of  the  distinction  between  h  kox 
TTov,  but  in  which  a  mind  accustomed  to  self-possession  cannot 
long  remain  without  a  sense  of  vapidity.  Then  a  feeling  of 
revolt  supervenes,  and  one  begins  to  understand  that  abstract 
thought  needs,  if  it  is  to  achieve  its  highest  point  of  lucidity 


PANTHEISM.  475 

and  concentration,  to  be  spurred  on  by  desire.  Such  at  least 
was  the  experience  of  the  friend  mentioned  above,  and  I 
suggest  his  experiment  for  imitation  to  those  who  speak  of 
Nirvana  from  hearsay  only,  and  have  never  practised  absolute 
renunciation.  The  only  danger  to  fear  is  lest  renunciation 
produce  a  certain  brutalization,  lest  one  lose  one's  self-control 
and  be  overcome  by  a  sort  of  vertigo  before  having  measured 
the  depth  of  the  abyss,  and  having  perceived  that  it  is  bottom- 
less. The  safest  paths  in  the  mountains  are  those  that  have 
been  trodden  out  by  asses  and  mules.  "  Follow  the  asses,"  is 
the  advice  of  the  guides.  The  advice  is  often  good  in  real 
life;  the  good  sense  of  the  multitude  opens  the  way  which 
must  be  followed,  whether  one  will  or  not,  and  philosophers 
may  well  at  times  "  follow  the  asses." 

Absorption  in  infinite  substance,  renunciation  of  the  desire 
to  live,  and  inert  sanctity  will  always  constitute  the  ultimate 
form  and  expression  of  human  illusion.  If  all  is 
egoS'm!^*'^  ^""^  vanity,  nothing,  after  all,  is  more  vain  than  to  be 
completely  conscious  that  all  is  vanity  ;  if  action 
is  vain,  repose  is  still  more  vain  ;  life  is  vain,  death  is  vainer. 
Even  sanctity  is  not  the  equal  of  charity,  the  equal,  that  is  to 
say,  of  what  binds  the  individual  to  other  individuals,  and  by 
that  fact  renders  him  once  more  the  slave  of  desire  and  of  pleas- 
ure— if  not  of  his  own  desires  and  pleasures,  at  least  of  those  of 
other  people.  One  must  always  serve  someone,  must  always 
be  in  bonds  to  something,  even  if  only  to  the  flesh.  One 
must  drag  a  chain,  if  one  is  to  draw  others  after  one.  Nobody 
forms  a  sul^cient  end  and  aim  for  his  own  activity  ;  nobody 
can  emancipate  himself  by  living  '  in  and  in,'  by  forming  an 
ideal  circle  like  the  coiled  serpent,  by  reflecting  eternally, 
according  to  the  Hindu  precept,  on  his  navel  ;  nothing  is 
more  like  servitude  than  liberty  that  is  confined  within  the 
bounds  of  self.  The  perfect  sanctity  of  the  mystics,  Buddhists, 
and  pessimists  is  a  subtler  egoism  simply  ;  and  the  sole  genuine 
virtue  in  the  world  is  generosity,  which  does  not  fear  to  set  its 
foot  in  the  dust,  in  the  service  of  another. 

We  do  not  therefore  believe,  with  Schopenhauer  and  Von 
Hartmann,  that  pessimism  will  be  the  religion  of  the  future. 


476  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

Life  will   not  be  persuaded  to  seek  death,  nor  movement  to 
prefer  immobility.     We  have  said  elsewhere  that  what  renders 

existence  possible  renders  it  also  desirable  ;  if  the 
deritprail.  sum    of   the    pains    of   human  life  were    greater 

than  the  sum  of  the  pleasures,  the  species  would 
become  extinct  by  a  gradual  decrease  in  the  vitality  of  each 
succeeding  generation.  Occidental  nations,  or  rather  the 
active  people  in  the  world,  to  whom  the  future  belongs,  will 
never  become  converts  to  pessimism.  Whoever  acts,  feels, 
has  power,  and  to  be  strong  is  to  be  happy.  Even  in  the 
Orient,  when  their  pessimism,  the  great  religions,  is  addressed  to 
the  multitude,  it  is  very  superficial ;  commonplace  maxims  on 
the  ills  of  existence,  and  on  the  necessity  for  resignation,  result 
as  a  matter  of  fact  in  d.  far  niente  which  is  appropriate  to  the 
manners  of  the  Orient.  And,  when  it  is  addressed  to  thinkers, 
pessimism  is  only  provisional — it  points  to  its  own  remedy  in 
Nirvana  ;  but  Nirvana  as  a  panacea  and  salvation  by  negation,  or 
by  violent  self-destruction,  will  not  long  captivate  modern  com- 
mon sense.  It  is  ridiculous  to  attribute  to  man  the  power  to 
destroy  the  sacred  germ  from  which  life,  with  all  its  illusions, 
has  sprung,  and  will  always  spring,  in  spite  of  ascetics  and 
partisans  of  individual  suicide,  and  even,  if  Von  Hartmann 
will,  of  "  cosmic  suicide."  It  is  perhaps  less  difficult  to  create 
than  to  annihilate,  to  make  God  than  to  destroy  Him. 


CHAPTER  V. 

REVIEW     OF     THE    PRINCIPAL     METAPHYSICAL     HYPOTHESES 
\VHICH  WILL  REPLACE  DOGMA — Concluded. 

Idealism,  Materialism,  Monism. 

I.  Idealism— Different  forms  of  idealism :  subjective  idealism, 
objective  idealism  :  The  whole  of  existence  resolved  into  a  mode 
of  mental  existence — Value  of  idealism  considered  from  point  of 
view  of  the  religious  sentiment — Most  specious  of  contemporary 
idealisms  :  Possibility  of  universal  progress  on  the  hypothesis  of 
radical  spontaneity  and  of  "  freedom  "—Reconciliation  between 
determinism  and  the  conception  of  freedom — Moral  idealism  as  a 
possible  substitute  for  religious  sentiment :  Dependence  of  the 
universe  on  the  principle  of  goodness. 

II.  Materialism— Difficulty  in  defining  absolute  materialism:  Matter, 
— The  atom— Nebular  hypothesis— Hydrogene— Necessity  of 
supplementing  materialism  by  some  theory  of  the  origin  of  life — 
The  latest  conception  of  materialism :  Conception  of  infinite 
divisibility  and  infinite  extensibility. 

III.  Monism  and  the  fate  of  worlds— Current  of  contemporary  sys- 
tems toward  monism — Scientific  interpretation  of  monism — The 
world  conceived  monistically  as  a  becoming  and  as  a  life— Scientific 
formulas  for  life — Progress  consists  in  the  gradual  confusion  of 
these  two  formulae- That  the  rise  of  morality  and  religion  can  be 
accounted  for  without  the  presupposition  of  any  final  cause — 
Metaphysical  and  moral  expectations  in  regard  to  the  destiny  of 
the  world  and  of  humanity  it  may  be  founded  on  scientific 
monism — Facts  which  appear  to  be  inconsistent  with  these  ex- 
pectations— Pessimistic  conception  of  dissolution  that  is  comple- 
mentary to  the  conception  of  evolution — Is  the  immanence  of 
dissolution  demonstrable?— Natural  devices  for  the  perpetuation 
of  the  "fittest  "—Role  of  intelligence,  of  numbers,  etc.— Calcula- 
tion of  probabilities— Is  tiermiy  a  parte  post  a.  ground  of  dis- 
couragement or  of  hope— Probable  existence  of  thinking  beings 
in  other  worlds:  the  planets,  possibility  of  the  existence  of  beings 
superior  toman— Survival  of  the  conception  of  gods — Hypothesis 
of  intercosmic  consciousness  and  of  a  universal  society. 

IV.  Destiny  of  the   human   race— The  hypothesis  of   immortality 

477 


478  NON-RELIGION  OF   THE  FUTURE. 

from  the  point  of  view  of  monism — Two  possible  conceptions  of 
immortality — Eternal  or  untemporal  existence  and  continuation 
of  life  in  some  superior  forms— I.  Hypothesis  of  eternal  life — its 
function  in  antique  religions,  in  Platonism,  and  in  the  systems  of 
Spinoza,   Kant,   and   Schopenhauer — Eternal   life  and  the  sub- 
sistence  of   the  inclividual— Distinction  made  by  Schopenhauer 
and  various  other  philosophers  between  individuality  and  person- 
ality— Eternal  life  problematical  and  transcendent — Aristocratic 
tendency  of  the  theory  of  eternal  life — Hypothesis  of  conditional 
immortality — Criticism  of  the  hypothesis  of  conditional  immor- 
tality ;    incompatibility     of    this    notion    with    that    of    divine 
goodness — II.   Hypothesis  of  a  continuation  of  the  present  life 
and  its  evolution    into  some  superior  form — What   sort  of   im- 
mortality the  theory  of  evolution  permits  us  to  hope  for — Immor- 
tality of  one's  labours  and  conduct — True   conception  of  such 
immortality — Its  relation  to  the  laws  of  heredity,  atavism,  natural 
selection — Immortality  of  the  individual — Objections  drawn  from 
science — Protestations  of  affection  against  the  annihilation  of  the 
person — Resulting  antinomy — III.  Modern   opposition  between 
the  conception  of  futiction  and   the  conception  of  simple  sub- 
stance, in  which  ancient  philosophy  endeavours  to  find  a  proof 
of  immortality — Peripatetic  theory  of  Wundt  and  modern  philos- 
ophers on  the  nature  of  the  soul — Immortality  as  a  continuation 
of  function,  proved  not  by  the  simplicity,  but  by  the  complexity 
of  consciousness — Relation  between  complexity  and  instability — 
Three  stages  of  social  evolution — Analogy  of  conscience  with  a 
society,  collective  character  of  individual  consciousness — Concep- 
tion of  progressive  immortality — Last  product  of  evolution  and 
natural  selection  :  (i)  No  necessary  relation  between  the  com- 
positeness  and  complexity  of  consciousness  and  its  dissolubility  : 
indissoluble  compounds  in  the  physical  universe — (2)  Relation 
between  consciousnesses,  their  possible  fusion  in  a  superior  con- 
sciousness— Contemporary  psychology  and  the  religious  notion  of 
the  interpenetration  of  souls — Possible  evolution  of  memory  and 
identification  of  it  with  reality — Palingenesis  by  force  of  love — 
Problematic  character  of  those  conceptions  and  of  every  con- 
ception relative  to  existence,  of  consciousness,  and  the  relation 
between  existence  and  consciousness — IV.  Conception  of  death 
appropriate  to  those  who,  in  the  present  state  of  evolution,  do 
not  believe  in  the  immortality  of  the  individual — Antique  and 
modern  stoicism — Acceptance  of  death  :  element  of  melancholy 
and  of  greatness  in  it — Expansion  of  self  by  means  of  philo- 
sophical thought,  and  scientific  disinterestedness,  to  the  point  of 
to  some  extent  approving  one's  own  annihilation. 


THE  PRINCIPAL   METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES.        479' 

Naturalism  consists  in  believing  that  nature,  together  with 

the  beings  which  compose  it,  make  up  the  sum  total  of  exist- 

,,       ,  ence.     But  even  from   this   point  of  view  there 

The  problem  of  '■ 

the  immanence  of  still   remains  the  problem,  what  existence  essen- 
^'^^"  tially  is,  and  what  special  mode    of  existence  is 

most  typical.  Is  nature  material,  or  mental,  or  both  ?  The 
problem  of  the  essence  of  being  is  one  that  cannot  be  escaped. 
The  theory  that  seems  to-day  to  be  dominant  is  the 
"  double-aspect  "  theory — the  theory  of  two  inseparable  correl- 
atives subjective  and  objective,  of  consciousness 
aspert  theory"  ^nd  of  motion.  We  have,  as  M.  Taine '  would 
say,  two  texts  of  the  eternal  book  instead  of  one. 
The  question  is.  which  of  the  two  texts  is  original  and  sacred? 
Sometimes  that  which  is  furnished  by  introspection  alone, 
sometimes  that  which  objective  science  endeavours  to  deci- 
pher, are  respectively  held  to  be  primitive.  Thence  arise  two 
opposed  tendencies,  not  alone  in  psychological  but  in  metaphys- 
ical speculation  ;  the  one  toward  idealism,  the  other  toward 
materialism  ;  the  one  toward  what  lies  within,  the  other 
toward  what  lies  without.  But  these  two  aspects  may  and 
should  be  conceived  as  possessing  a  certain  unity;  there  is  an 
inevitable  tendency  in  the  human  mind  to  follow  out  twO' 
converging  lines  to  their  point  of  intersection.  There  are, 
therefore,  three  forms  of  naturalism:  idealism,  materialism, 
monism.  These  three  constitute  the  three  genuine  systems 
of  thought  from  which  theism,  atheism,  and  pantheism  are 
respectively  derived. 

/.  Idealism. 

If  the  words  thought  and  idea  be  interpreted  as  Descartes 

and  Spinoza  understand  them,  as  designating  the  entire  life 

of  the  mind,  the  sum  total  of  the  possible  con- 

ideaiism  |-gj^t  Qf  consciousness,  idealism  may  be  defined  as- 

defined.  ,  .  ,  1  11        1-      •  1         1  . 

the  system  which  resolves  all  reality  into  thought, 

into  psychical  existence,  insomuch  that  to  be  is  to  think  or  to 

be  thought ;  to  feel  or  to  be  felt ;  to  will  or  to  be  willed  ;  to  be 

the  object  or  subject  of  a  conscious  effort. 

'  M.  Ribot  holds  the  same  doctrine. 


48o  NON.RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

It  is  evident  that  idealism    is  one  of  the  systen:is  which  is 

capable  of  affording  a  certain  satisfaction  to  the  religious  sen- 

,,   ,.         ,      timent,  because  the  religious  sentiment  is  allied 

Idealism  and  '  ° 

the  religions  to  the  instinct  for  metaphysics,  and  the  instinct  for 
instinct.  metaphysics  finds  itself  at  home  among  all  things 

of  the  spirit,  of  thought,  of  the  moral  world.  The  foundation  of 
theism,  as  we  have  said,  is  moralism  ;  the  belief,  that  is  to  say, 
that  the  true  power  in  nature  is  mental  and  moral.  God  is  sim- 
ply a  representation  of  this  power,  conceived  as  transcendent;. 
Pantheism  itself,  after  having  divinized  and  materialized  the 
universe  and  resolved  all  things,  so  to  speak,  into  God,  tends 
to  become  idealistic,  to  resolve  God  into  the  thought  which 
has  conceived  Him,  to  deny  Him  all  existence  over  and 
above  that  which  He  possesses  in  thought,  and  for  thought, 
and  by  virtue  of  thought.  According  to  the  Hindu  compari- 
son, the  human  mind  is  like  the  spider  that  can  build  its  man- 
sion out  of  materials  drawn  from  its  own  body,  and  then 
reabsorb  them. 

But  how  shall  the  mind  itself,  the  central  fund  of  thought 

that  is  the  origin  and  end  of  all  things,  be  conceived  ?     Is  it 

individual  or  impersonal  ?     English  subjective  or 

Subjective  egoistic  idealism,  as  Mr.  Huxley  defines  it  in  his 

idealism  criticised. 

"  Life  of  Hume,"  replies,  that  in  spite  of  all  dem- 
onstration to  the  contrary,  the  collection  of  perceptions  which 
constitute  our  consciousness  may  be  simply  a  phantasmagoria 
which,  engendered  and  co-ordinated  by  the  ego,  unrolls  its 
successive  scenes  upon  a  background  of  nonentity.  Mr. 
Spencer  retorts  that,  if  the  universe  is  thus  simply  a  projec- 
tion of  our  subjective  sensations,  evolution  is  a  dream  ;  but 
evolution  may  be  formulated  in  idealistic  quite  as  well  as 
realistic  terms :  and  a  coherent  dream  is  as  good  as  reality. 
Subjective  idealism  is  therefore  difficult  to  refute  logically  ; 
but  in  spite  of  that  fact  it  will  never  have  many  followers. 
For  this  apparent  simplification  of  the  world  is  in  reality  a 
complication.  For  subjective  idealism  involves  the  ridiculous 
hypothesis  of  a  chance  agreement  between  the  impressions  of 
any  given  individual  and  of  all  other  individuals:  a  difficulty 
much  harder  to  explain  away  than  the  preliminary  one  of  the 


THE  PRINCIPAL  METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES         481 

simple  reflection  in  us  of  an  external  world.  Mental  phenom- 
ena  are  always  more  complex  than  material  phenomena. 

The  reduction  of  the  external  world  to  subjective  terms,  the 
explanation  of  the  optical  illusion  of  objectivity,  demands  a 
much  greater  display  of  vain  ingenuity  than  any  theory  of 
simple  perception.  More  than  that,  the  least  effort  with  the 
resistance  that  it  encounters  is  a  refutation  of  egoistic,  or  as 
the  English  again  say,  solipsistic  idealism.  In  the  fact  of 
resistance,  subjective  sensation  and  the  perception  of  an  ob- 
jective reality  coincide.  Even  if  the  manner  in  which  our  sen- 
sations of  resistance  are  combined  in  tridimensional  space  may 
be  conceived  as  subjective,  it  is  difficult  to  admit  that  the 
materials  out  of  which  the  structure  is  made  are,  as  it  were, 
suspended  in  mid-air.  To  explain  the  fact  of  resistance 
requires  us  absolutely  to  pass  beyond  the  limits  of  con- 
sciousness, for  even  in  the  cases  in  which  the  sensation  of 
resistance  seems  to  be  due  to  hallucination,  the  cause  of  hal- 
lucination is  always  found  to  be  some  instance  of  actual  resist- 
ance, of  friction  or  stress  inside  the  body.  The  mistake  of  a 
madman,  who  sees  an  unfamiliar  form  take  shape  and  rise 
before  his  eyes,  is  not  that  of  considering  the  power  as  exist- 
ing outside  of  himself,  but  of  locating  it  at  the  extremities  of 
his  nerves  of  touch  ;  whereas  it  is  really  in  his  brain,  at  the 
point  where  the  nerves  intersect  with  the  cerebral  centres. 
He  is  right  in  his  sense  of  the  presence  of  an  enemy,  but 
wrong  in  the  direction  in  which  he  looks  for  it. 

We  are  obliged,  therefore,  to  admit  the  hypothesis  of  a  mul- 
titude of  microcosms,  of  mine,  of  yours,  of  everybody's,  and  of 
a  single  macrocosm  the  same  for  everybody. 
tiveTdeaUsm!  ''^°'  What  is  true  is  that  between  the  great  world  and 
every  little  world  there  is  an  incessant  commu- 
nication, by  means  of  which  everything  that  passes  in  the  one 
is  echoed  in  the  other.  We  live  in  the  universe,  and  the  uni- 
verse lives  in  us.  The  statement  is  not  metaphorical,  but 
literal.  If  we  could  look  into  the  consciousness  of  a  school 
child,  we  should  see  a  more  or  less  faithful  image  of  all  the 
marvels  of  the  world '.  skies,  seas,  mountains,  cities,  etc.;  we 
should    perceive    the    germ    of    every  elevated   sentiment,  of 


482  NON-RELIGION  OF   THE   FUTURE. 

every  kind  of  complex  knowledge  that  the  human  brain  con- 
tains. If  we  could  look  into  the  consciousness  of  some  great 
man — some  thinker,  some  poet — the  spectacle  would  be  quite 
different.  It  would  embrace  the  whole  of  the  visible  and 
invisible  universe,  with  its  facts  and  its  laws ;  it  would  embrace 
what  is  best  in  the  whole  of  humanity.  If  the  traces  left  by 
experience  on  the  nervous  system  could  be  read,  like  the  writ- 
ing in  a  book,  the  earth  might  disappear,  and  its  image  and 
history  be  handed  down  in  certain  chosen  human  brains. 

Active  and  practical  humanity  will  always  believe  in  realism 
to  the  extent  of  insisting  that  the  world  possesses  an  existence 
_    ,,  which  is  independent  of  any  individual   thought, 

destined  to  pre-  We  shall  dwell  no  further  on  subjective  idealism, 
^^^  ■  which  is  more  important  as  a  metaphysical  curi- 

osity than  for  any  comfort  it  gives  to  the  religious  sentiment. 

Of  objective  idealism  the  same  cannot  be  said.  In  objec- 
tive idealism,  too,  all  material  existence  is  regarded  as  a  mode 
of  mental  existence ;  being  is  identified  either 
jectivei  ea  -   ^\^\^  ^-j-^g  jjeal  law  which  presides  over  the  devel- 

ism.  r 

opment  of  the  universe,  or  with  the  genuine 
foundation  of  our  consciousness,  our  sensations,  our  desires. 
The  world,  as  Emerson  has  said,  is  a  precipitate  of  the  soul. 

This  hypothesis  is  certainly  one  of  those  that  may  best  serve 
as  a  substitute   for   theism,  if  theism   should   ever  disappear. 

But  idealism,  thus  understood,  is  open  to  the  fol- 

Criticised.         ,        .  1  •      ,  •  t      • ,        r  •    1 

lowmg   objection :    is  it   of    any    special    use    to 

objectify  the  soul,  if  the  existence  of  evil,  which  Plato  identi- 
fied with  matter,  is  thereby  left  unchanged?  It  is  in  vain  to 
translate  evolution  into  psychic  terms;  no  difificulty  can  be 
avoided  by  so  doing.  The  mysterious  imperfections  of  the 
exterior  world  are  transported  bodily  into  the  mind  ;  evil  is 
spiritualized  simply.  Identifying  things  with  the  intellectual 
law  which  presides  over  their  evolution  in  nowise  excuses  us 
from  explaining  why  that  law  is  in  so  many  respects  bad,  and 
why  the  intelligence  that  directs  the  universe  is  so  often  self- 
contradictory  and  feeble. 

In  spite  of  this  objection,  which  will,  perhaps,  never  receive 
a  sufficient  reply,  it  is  certain  that,  so  far  as  our  moral  and  social 


THE  PRINCIPAL   METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES.        483 

instincts  are  concerned,  idealism  offers  us  greater  ground   for 

hope   than   either   of  the   remaining  systems   of  thought.     In 

Objective  ideal-   ^P'^e  of  evil  and  pain,  the  desire  of  progress  and 

ism  relatively  of  salvation,  which  is  the  basis  of  all  religious 
capable  of  satisfy-  ,      .  ,  ^,  ,  ^  .       , 

ing  the  moral  speculation,  may  rely  upon  thought  as  its  last  re- 
instincts,  source.  But  thought,  if  the  doctrine  of  objective 
idealism  is  to  be  made  acceptable,  must  be  understood  as 
including  not  onl\'  intelligence,  but  also  sentiment,  desire,  and 
volition,  and,  in  effect,  the  purely  intellectual  idealism  of  a 
former  time  is  at  the  present  day  being  succeeded  by  an  ideal- 
ism that  regards  the  will  as  the  fundamental  element  in  the 
universe.'  Universal  sensibility  is  an  incident  of  universal 
power  of  will,  whereas  intelligence,  properly  so  called,  at  least 
in  so  far  as  the  function  of  intelligence  is  regarded  as  repre- 
sentation, is  more  superficial  than  sensibility  or  volition.* 
These  three  inseparable  forms  of  psychic  life^  constitute  the 
great  forces  to  which  moral  and  religious  sentiment  must 
always  turn  for  support. 

Idealism,    thus    understood,    constitutes    one    of    the    most 
tempting  of  the  solutions  of  the  problem  of  evil.     Optimism 

_     ,,    .     „     being,  as   we   have  seen,  indefensible,  and   pessi- 
Hypotnesis  of  °  _  ^ 

moral  progress  mism  being  a  caricature,  the  most  plausible 
wo™^'°'^'  religious  and  metaphysical  hypothesis  at  the 
present  day  is  the  conception  of  a  "  possible  prog- 
ress owing  to  the  radical  spontaneity  of  all  existing  things."* 
The  will,  according  to  this  hypothesis,  with  its  tendency  to 
indefinite  self-expansion,  is  par  excellence  the  primitive  power, 
the  central  element  in  man  and  in  the  universe.  Freedom  of 
the  will  in  man  means  the  consciousness  of  this  progressive 
power,  which  is  immanent  in  all  things,  and  this  consciousness 
may  be  made  the  foundation  of  a  moral  being.  This  concep- 
tion of  freedom,  which  is  reconcilable  with  determinism, 
becomes  an  additional  motive  among  the  other  motives  that 

'  See  Schelling,    Schopenhauer,    Lotze,   Wiindt,   Secretan,   MM.   Ravaison,  A. 
Fouillee,  Lachelier,  and,  to  a  certain  extent,  M.  Renouvier. 
''See  Schopenhauer.  Horwicz,  and  M.  Fouillee. 
'  See  Wundt's  Psychologic  physiologique. 
•*  Alfred  Fouillee,  La  Liberty  et  le  Determinisine,  2d  edition,  pp.  353,  354,  356. 


484  NOX-RELIGIOX  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

govern  man's  life,  and  tends  to  be  realized  b\-  the  very  fact 
that  it  is  conceived  and  desired.  Through  the  intermediation 
of  this  conception,  reality  possesses  a  progressive  freedom, 
tiiat  is  to  say,  a  power  of  constant  union  with  the  whole,  and 
of  moral  enfranchisement.  "In  the  beginning  there  obtains 
a  uni\'eisal  antagonism  among  the  forces  of  the  universe,  a 
brutal  fatality,  an  infinite  reign  of  shock  and  counter-shock, 
between  blind  and  blindly  driven  beings  ;  then  there  arises  a 
progressive  organization  that  makes  the  evolution  of  con- 
sciousness, and  therefore  of  volition,  possible;  there  arises  a 
gradual  union  and  fraternit}-  among  the  particulars  that  con- 
stitute the  universe.  Ill-will,  whether  it  originate  in  mechan- 
ical necessity  or  in  intellectual  ignorance,  is  transitory; 
good-will  is  permanent,  radical,  normal,  and  fundamental.  To 
cultivate  good-will  in  one's  self  is  to  enfranchise  one's  self  from 
the  individual  and  the  transitory  in  favour  of  the  universal 
and  the  permanent ;  it  is  to  become  truly  free,  and  by  that 
ver}'  fact  to  become  truly  loving."' 

Between  progressive  freedom  thus  conceived,  and  the  deter- 
minism in  the  midst  of  which  it  progresses,  there  is  no  opposi- 
Reconciliation     ^^°"  '    freedom  and  determinism    constitute  two 
between  freedom     aspects  of  one  and- the  same  process  of  evolution. 

and  determinism.      t\i.  ••  ^-n  •   ^       •  •  t 

Determmism  essentially  consists  in  a  series  of 
actions  and  reactions  existing  between  other  beings  and  our- 
selves;  but  these  very  actions  and  reactions  constitute  the 
manifestation  of  the  development  of  our,  and  their,  inner 
activities.  And  the  source  of  activity  in  the  universe  is  none 
other  than  an  overflowing  power,  which  is  hostile  to  limitation, 
to  impediment  of  every  kind  ;  is,  in  a  word,  none  other  than  a 
self-realizing  volition.  Freedom,  thus  understood,  may,  there- 
fore, be  considered  in  the  last  resort  as  the  origin  of  determi- 
nism and  as  one  with  it.^  Necessity  is,  so  to  speak,  the  outer 
surface  of  freedom — the  point  of  contact  between  two  or 
more  free  agents.  Freedom  is  inconceivable  apart  from  a  re- 
sulting determinism,  for  to  be  free  is  to  possess  power,  is  to  act 
and  to  react,  is  to  determine  and  to  be  determined.     Deter- 

'  Alfred  Fouillee,  La  Liberie  et  le  D^terminisme ,  2d  edition,  pp.  353,  354,  356. 
^  A.  Fouillee,  op.  cit. 


THE  PRINCIPAL   METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES.        485 

minism,  on  the  other  hand,  that  is  to  say,  reciprocal  action, 
is  inconceivable  apart  from  freedom,  from  internal  action, 
from  a  spontaneous  outbreak  of  power  that  tends  to  be  free. 
So  that  one  may  say,  without  contradiction,  that  determinism 
envelops  the  world,  and  that  free-will  constitutes  it. 

If   the   shock   of   wills  in  the  world  is  unusually  brutal,  the 
reason    is   that   they  are   as  yet   but   half  conscious   of   their 
Id   in  powers;   as  consciousness  develops,  contest  will 

the  aim  of  the  give  way  to  Concurrence.  To  avoid  violent  con- 
universe,  cussion  with  obstacles  in  the  way,  the  free  agent 

has  less  need  of  acquaintance  with  them  than  of  acquaintance 
with  itself.  As  there  is  nothing  in  the  universe  that  is  foreign 
to  volition,  there  is  nothing  in  the  universe  that  is  foreign  to 
the  ideal  that  every  volition  aims  at.  It  is  probable  that  life 
is  always  and  everywhere  accompanied  by  consciousness  in 
some  slight  degree;  and  wherever  consciousness  exists,  desire 
may  exist.  Nature's  device,  as  a  contemporaneous  poet  has 
said,  is  "  I  aspire."  The  human  ideal  is,  perhaps,  no  more 
than  the  conscious  formulation  of  this  aspiration  which  is 
common  to  the  whole  universe.  If  so,  it  follows  that  ideal 
freedom  is  the  limit  of  evolution,  and  that  volition,  which  aims 
at  ideal  freedom,  is  the  principle  of  it.' 

It  has  been  objected  to  this  idealist  theory  of  evolution  that 
progress  implies  an  aim   and  the  observance  of  certain  princi- 
ples in  its  attainment,  while  evolution  does  not.'^ 

Objections  g^^^  ^j^^  precise  object  of  the  doctrine  in  question 

answered,  ir  j  x 

is  to  supply  evolution  with  a  name  and  appropri- 
ate principles,  and  to  extend  the  notion  of  progress  to  the 
universe  as  a  whole.  It  has  also  been  objected  to  this  some- 
what panthelistic  hypothesis  (^e'Ao?),  that  if  everything  is  free, 
nothing  is  free."  This  objection  is  not  exact,  for  it  would 
imply,  in  economics,  for  instance,  that  to  increase  everybody's 
well-being  would  increase  the  well-being  of  nobody,  or  that  if 

'  "  The  category  of  Real  Existence  does  not  seem  reconcilable  with  the  notion  of 
liberty;  the  latter  in  its  perfection  must  be  conceived  under  the  category  of  the 
Ideal,  and  in  its  imperfection  under  that  of  Becoming." — A.  Fouillee,  La  Liberie  et 
ie  D^terminisme,  conclusion. 

■^  M.  Franck,  Essais  de  critique  philosophique. 

'  M.  Franck,  op.  cit. 


486  NON-RELIGION   OF    THE  FUTURE. 

everybody  equally  should  be  impoverished,  everybody  would 
equally  be  enriched.  To  universalize  a  conception  is  one  thing, 
to  suppress  it  is  another.  The  world  cannot  at  the  present  day 
be  conceived  as  distinct  from  the  human  race  :  the  two  are 
vitally  and  intimately  related.  Endow  mankind  with  an  un- 
biassed freedom  of  will,  and  Epicurus  would  be  right  in  holding 
that  indeterminism  is  the  basis  of  all  things.'  Similarly,  sup- 
pose mankind  endowed  with  "  a  radical  goodness  of  will,  which  is 
very  distinct  from  freedom  of  the  will,  but  nevertheless  consti- 
tutes a  sort  of  moral  freedom  in  process  of  formation,"^  and 
the  germ  of  such  goodness  of  will  should  be  found  in  a  more 
or  less  unconscious  form  throughout  the  entire  universe.  Be- 
fore the  human  mind  can  really  produce  anything  whatever, 
the  whole  universe  must  be  like  it  in  labour.  Partisans  of  the 
theory  of  goodness  of  will  as  the  basis  of  human  morality 
are  therefore  logical  in  regarding  it  as  more  or  less  present  in 
some  degraded  form  throughout  the  whole  of  nature,  even  in 
beings  in  which  intelligence  has  not  yet  made  its  appearance ; 
and  goodness  of  will  in  such  cases  is  to  be  considered  as 
accompanied  by  the  obscure  beginnings  of  responsibility,  of 
implicit  merit  or  demerit — one  must  return  in  effect  to  a  sort 
of  re-reading  of  the  Hindu  theory,  according  to  which  the 
several  degrees  that  exist  in  nature  represent  so  many  stages 
in  morality. 

Hypotheses  jingo  is  the  mother  of  metaphysics.     Moral  ideal- 
ism of  the  kind  we  have  just  epitomized  from  the  pages  of  a 
,,    ,  .,   ,,       contemporary  author  is  decidedlv  no  more  than  a 

Moral  idealism  r  j  . 

and  the  religions  h^'pothesis,  and  a  hypothesis  open  to  discussion; 
sentiment.  y^^^  j^  j^  assuredly  the  form  of  idealism  that  is 

least  incompatible  with  the  theory  of  evolution,  and  with  the 
facts  of  natural  history  and  of  human  history."  IMoreover,  it 
affords  unusual  scope  for  the  religious  sentiment,  freed  from  its 
mysticism  and  transcendence.     If  the  unknown  activity  which 

'  The  author  argued  the  point  at  length,  in  1873,  in  his  book  on  Epicurus.  See 
also  his  Morale  anglaise,  2  partie,  pp.  3S5-3S6,  2d  edition. 

^  A.  Fouillee,  La  Libert^  et  le  Determinisme,  2d  edition. 

^  This  form  of  idealism  is  equally  compatible  with  the  prevailing  monistic  doc- 
trines, and  is  in  some  cases,  as  notably  in  that  of  M.  Fouillee,  confounded  with  them. 
See  below. 


THE   PRINCIPAL   METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES.        487 

lies  at  the  basis  of  the  natural  world  has  produced  in  the 
human  race  a  consciousness  of  goodness,  and  a  deliberate  desire 
for  it,  there  is  reason  to  hope  and  to  believe  that  the  last  word 
of  ethics  and  metaphysics  is  not  a  negative. 

We  have  a  number  of  times  cited  Schleiermacher's  defini- 
tion   of    religion  :  the    sense   of   our  absolute   dependence   in 

„  ,,  .     .  ^        regard  to  the  universe  and  its  principle.     When 
Religion  inter-  »  '^  '■ 

preted  in  the  light  the  religious  sentiment  becomes  transformed  into 
of  this  hypothesis.  ^  ^^^^^y  idealism  its  correct  formula  tends  to  be 

the  inverse  of  the  preceding:  a  sense  of  the  dependence  of  the 
universe  upon  the  determination  that  goodness  shall  prevail, 
of  which  we  are  conscious  in  ourselves  and  which  we  conceive 
to  be  or  to  be  capable  of  becoming  the  directing  principle  of 
universal  evolution.  The  notion  of  the  moral  and  social  ideal 
of  freedom  is,  therefore,  according  to  this  doctrine,  not  a  mere 
superficial  accident  in  the  universe,  but  a  revelation  and 
growing  consciousness  of  the  most  fundamental  laws  of  the 
universe,  of  the  true  essence  of  things,  which  is  the  same  in  all 
beings  in  different  degrees  and  in  diverse  combinations.  Na- 
ture represents  an  eternal  ascent  toward  a  more  and  more 
clearly  conceived  ideal,  which  dominates  its  progress  from  be- 
ginning to  end.  As  one  climbs  a  height  to  survey  a  mountain 
range,  the  snow-capped  peaks  rise  silently  and  take  their 
places  side  by  side  along  the  horizon  ;  it  seems  as  if  the  enor- 
mous masses  rise  in  obedience  to  an  immense  effort  which 
uplifts  them  ;  it  seems  as  if  their  immobility  is  only  apparent, 
and  one  feels  borne  aloft  with  them  toward  the  zenith.  The 
heroes  in  the  Indian  legend,  when  they  were  weary  of  life  and 
of  the  earth,  rallied  their  strength  for  a  final  effort,  and  hand 
in  hand  scaled  the  Himalayas,  and  the  mountains  bore  them 
away  into  the  clouds.  Ancient  peoples  generally  regarded 
the  mountains  as  a  transition  between  earth  and  sky  ;  it  was 
from  the  mountains  that  the  soul,  profiting  by  the  impulse 
lent  it  by  the  last  touch  of  earth,  took  its  freest  flight :  the 
mountains  constituted  a  pathway  toward  the  open  heavens. 
And  that  may  be  an  element  of  profundity  in  these  naive 
ideas  which  ascribe  to  nature  aspirations  which  are  more 
properly  human.     Do  there  not  exist  in  nature  great  unfinished 


488  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

sketches,  hints  and  Hnes  leading  upward  ?  Nature  has  done 
all  that  unconsciously,  has  blindly  piled  block  on  block  of  stone 
slowly  toward  the  stars.  It  is  man's  privilege  to  read  a 
meaning  into  her  work,  to  make  use  of  her  efforts,  to  employ 
past  centuries  as  the  materials  out  of  which  to  build  the 
future;  by  scaling  the  heights  of  nature  man  will  reach 
the  sky. 

//.  Materialism. 

Properly  to  estimate  idealism  it  must  be  contrasted  with  its 
opposite,  materialism. 

We  shall  say  but  a  few  words  on  the  subject  of  pure  mate- 
rialism, because  of  all  systems  of  thought  materialism  is  the 
farthest  removed  from   those   which  give  rise  to 

Materialism        religious  and  to  metaphysical  theories.     Absolute 
difficult  to  define.  ...  .  ^,  ,.„      , 

materialism  is  somewhat  dimcult  to  denne,  be- 
cause matter  is  one  of  the  vaguest  of  words.  To  aim  at 
representing  the  ultimate  elements  of  matter  as  wholly  inde- 
pendent of  thought,  of  consciousness,  of  life,  is  evidently- 
chimerical  ;  such  an  effort  leads  straight  to  the  pure  indeter- 
minism  of  matter  as  conceived  by  Plato,  Aristotle,  and  Hegel ; 
to  an  indefinite  dyad,  to  a  theory  of  virtuality  and  of  the 
identity  of  non-being.  Also  materialists  are  obliged  to  regard 
as  determinate  and  material  the  primitive  force  of  which  the 
world  constitutes  simply  a  development.  If,  for  example,  ac- 
cording to  the  most  recent  theories,  all  matter  should  prove 
to  be  reducible  to  hydrogen,  materialism  would  regard  hydro- 
gen as  constituting  a  sort  of  material  or  substantial  unity  in 
the  world.  Variety  would  exist  only  in  the  forms  displayed 
by  the  primitive  element,  hydrogen,  or,  if  you  prefer,  pre- 
hydrogen. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  this  conception  is  somewhat 
naive  and  nominalistic  ;  the  word  material    or   chemical  can 

never  express  more  than  the  outside,  than  the 
crMcised^^'^"^        exterior    properties    of    the    primordial   element. 

The  hydrogen  atom  itself  is  probably  in  a  high 
degree  composite,  is  itself  probably  a  world  of  little  worlds, 
held  in  place  by  gravitation.     The  very  conception  of  an  in- 


THE   PRINCIPAL   METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES.         489 

divisible  atom  is  philosophically  infantine.  Thomson  and 
Helmholtz  have  shown  that  our  atoms  are  little  vortices  of 
energy,  and  have  succeeded  in  producing  experimentally 
analogous  vortices  formed  of  vapour;  for  instance,  of  the 
vapour  chlor-hydrate  of  ammonia.  Each  vortex  is  composed 
always  of  the  same  particles  ;  no  one  particle  can  be  sep- 
arated from  the  others  ;  each  vortex  possesses,  therefore,  a 
stable  individuality.  When  the  attempt  is  made  to  cut  the 
vortices,  they  fly  the  blade  or  bend  about  it,  and  prove  to  be 
indivisible.  They  are  capable  of  contraction,  of  dilation,  of 
partial  interpei>etration  and  distortion,  but  never  of  dissolu- 
tion. And  certain  men  of  science  have  thence  inferred  that 
we  possess  thus  a  material  proof  of  the  existence  of  atoms. 
And  so  indeed  we  do,  providing  an  atom  be  understood  to  be 
something  as  complex,  as  little  primordial,  and  as  relatively 
enormous  as  a  nebula.  Atoms  are  indivisible  as  a  nebula  is 
indivisible  by  a  knife  blade,  and  the  atom  of  hydrogen  is 
about  as  simple  as  the  solar  system.  To  explain  the  uni- 
verse by  hydrogen  is  like  explaining  it  by  the  sun  and  the 
planets.  The  rise  of  the  actual  world  out  of  hydrogen  can  be 
conceived  only  on  condition  of  ascribing  to  the  alleged 
atoms  of  hydrogen  something  more  than  physicists  and 
chemists  know  them  to  possess.  Materialism,  therefore,  must 
enlarge  its  principle  if  it  is  to  prove  productive  :  enlarge,  as 
Diderot  would  say,  your  atheism  and  your  materialism. 

But    the    instant  materialism    is   '"enlarged,"  the    universal 

element  must  at  once  be  regarded  as  alive  and  is  not  what  is 

called  brute  matter.     Every  generation  of  phvsi- 

Must  be  supple-       .    ,  t  r      o  '  1  ■  •  i'i     t 

mented  by  some      cists,  as  Air.  bpencer  says,  discovers  in  so  called 

theory  to  account    brute  matter   forces   the   existence   of   which  the 

for  life.  .  .... 

best  informed  physicist  would  some  years  pre- 
vious have  disbelieved.  When  we  perceive  solid  bodies,  sensi- 
tive in  spite  of  their  inertia  to  the  action  of  forces,  the  number 
of  which  is  infinite  ;  when  the  spectroscope  proves  to  us  that 
terrestrial  molecules  move  in  harmony  with  molecules  in  the 
stars;  when  we  find  ourselves  obliged  to  infer  that  the  innumer- 
able vibrations  traverse  space  in  all  directions,  the  conception 
which  is  forced  upon  us  is  not  that  of  a  universe  of  dead  matter 


49°  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

but  rather  that  of  a    universe  everywhere    aHve;  alive   in  the 

general  sense  of  the  word,  if  not  in  the  restricted.'     The  notion 

of  life  is  perhaps  more  human  and  more  subjective,  but  after  all 

more  complete  and  concrete  than  the  notion  of-movement  and 

of  force  ;  for  we  cannot  hope  to  discover  the  truth  at  any  great 

distance  from  the  subjective,  since  subjectivity  is  the  necessary 

form  in  which  truth  appears  to  us. 

The  second  emendation  to  which  materialism  must  submit, 

if  it  is  to  satisfy  the  metaphysical  instincts  of  mankind,  is  to 

include  in  the   primordial   element   not   only  life 
Must  be  supple-    ,      ^  r         •      i        t3    *.         •  „ -i.-  i.^. 

mentedbysome  but  some  germ  of  mind.  But  prnnitive  matter 
sort  of  mind-stuff  conceived  as  a  force  capable  of  living  and  ulti- 
mately of  thinking  is  not  what  is  scientifically  and 
vulgarly  regarded  as  matter,  far  less  as  hydrogen.  The  pure 
materialist,  thumping  the  rotundity  of  the  earth  with  his  fist, 
and  relying  grossly  on  his  sense  of  touch,  cries  :  "  Matter  is 
everything,"  but  matter  is  analyzable  into  force,  and  force  is 
simply  a  primitive  form  of  life.  Materialism  therefore  issues 
into  a  sort  of  animism;  in  the  presence  of  the  circling  world,  the 
materialist  is  obliged  to  say  it  is  alive.  Nor  can  he  stop  there  ; 
the  world  is  force,  is  action,  is  life — and  something  more  ;  for 
in  and  by  me  the  world  thinks.     E  pur  si pcnsa  ! 

Behold  us  landed  once  more  in  idealism.     And,  indeed,  as 

Lange  and   M.  Taine   have    well    shown,    materialism    easily 

passes  to  idealism;  pure  materialism  results  in  an 

Passes  readily     abstract  mechanism,  which  is  analyzable  into  the 

into  idealism,  '  ^ 

laws  of  logic  and  of  thought.  And  the  basis  of 
this  mechanism — atoms  and  motion — consists  in  enfeebled  sub- 
tilized and  rarefied  tactual  and  visual  sensations,  taken  ulti- 
mately as  the  expression  of  the  final  reality.  The  alleged 
foundation  of  objective  reality  is  simply  a  residuum  of  our 
most  essential  sensations.  Materialism  is  advocated  in  the 
name  of  positive  science  ;  but  it,  not  less  than  idealism,  belongs 
really  to  the  poetry  of  metaphysics  ;  its  poetry  is  recorded 
simply  in  terms  of  atoms  and  motion,  instead  of  in  terms  of 
the    elements    of    consciousness.     Materialistic    symbols    are 

'  Mr.  Spencer  himself  has  a  little  forgotten   this  fact  in   a  number  of  his  own 
somewhat  too  mechanical  constructions. 


THE   PRIXCIPAL   METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES.        491 

more  matter  of  fact,  more  neighbour  to  the  visible  reahty, 
possess  a  wider  compass  and  generaUty,  but  they  are  none  the 
less  symbols  simply.  Materialism  is  in  some  sort  a  tissue  of 
metaphor  in  which  scientific  terms  lose  their  scientific  signi- 
fication, and  gain  a  metaphysical  signification  in  its  stead, 
transferred,  as  they  are,  to  a  domain  that  lies  beyond  the 
range  of  experience.  The  man  of  science  who  speculates  thus 
upon  the  nature  of  things  is,  unknown  to  himself,  a  modern 
Lucretius. 

And   finally,   materialism,   properly  so  called,  has  been   in- 
vaded   by  a  notion  which    has    been  at  all  times   peculiarly 

„  ,   .  ,.  adapted  to  satisfv  the  metaphysical  and  religious 

Materialism  ^      _  '         . 

aud  the  notion  of  aspirations  of  mankind;  the  notion  of  infinity, 
^  ^*^'  whether  in  the  direction  of  greatness  or  the  op- 

posite. I\Ien  of  science  go  to  the  trouble  of  estimating  the 
number  of  molecules  in  a  drop  of  water ;  they  tell  us  that  the 
thousandth  part  of  a  millimeter  of  water  contains  228,000,000 
molecules  ;  they  say  that  a  pinhead  contains  the  fourth 
power  of  20,000.000  atoms,  and  that,  if  the  atoms  could  be 
counted  a  billion  every  second,  it  would  take  253,678  years  to 
complete  the  task.  But  all  such  calculations  are  simply  arith- 
metical jeux  (T esprit.  These  figures,  which  are  so  great  in 
appearance,  really  amount  to  nothing,  and  a  grain  of  sand, 
no  doubt,  contains  literally  an  infinite  number  of  particles. 

The  argument  against  the  notion  of  infinity,  based  on  the 
logical  impossibility  of  an  infinite  number,  is  not  decisive;' 
Final  break-  '^  rests  upon  a  begging  of  the  question,  namely, 
down  of  material-  that  everything  in  the  universe  is  innumerable — 
that  is  to  say,  is  capable  of  being  precisely  in- 
cluded within  the  limits  of  an  intelligence  like  our  own. 
Logic,  on  the  contrary,  insists  that  in  homogeneous  matter, 
like  space,  time,  and  quantity,  there  is  no  limit  to  the  possi- 
bility of  division  and  multiplication,  and  that,  consequently, 
tlie\-  may  proceed  beyond  any  given  number.  If  so  called 
"  purely  scientific  "  materialism  does  not  admit  that  nature  is 
coextensive  with  man's  conception   of  what  is  possible — if  it 

'  See  Reuouvier's  arguments  and  Lotze's  and   Fouillee's  replies  to  them  in  the 
Revue  philosophique. 


492  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

denies  the  parallelism  between  thought  and  nature — it  by  that 
very  fact  denies  also   the    rationality   of   nature,  which  is  pre- 
cisely the   principle    upon    which   every   philosophy  that  pre- 
tends to  be  purely  scientific  ultimately  relies.    Whoever  rejects 
the  notion  of  infinity  is  obliged,  in  the  last  resort,  to  suppose 
a  species  of  contradiction  between  the  activity  of  the  human 
mind,  which  is  unable  to  stop  at   any  given  point,  and  nature, 
which  stops,  for  no  reason  in  particular,  at  a  determinate  point 
in  time  and  space.     The  conception  of  infinity  may  be  said  to 
be  forced  upon  materialism,  and  that  very  notion  contains  one 
of  the  antinomies  against  which  intelligence,  by  the  very  fact 
of  its  employment,  is   ultimately  brought  to  a  standstill ;  it  is 
precisely  in  the  act  of  counting  that  intelligence  achieves  the 
conception  of  the  nnumerable  ;  it  is  by  exhausting  every  given 
quantity  that  it  achieves  the  conception  of  the  inexhaustible; 
it  is  by  reaching  ever  beyond   the   limits  of  the  known  that  it 
comes  in   touch  with  the   unknowable  ;  and  all  these  concep- 
tions mark  the  point  where  we  feel  our  intelligence  becoming 
feeble  and  beyond  which  our  sight  grows  dim.    Back  of  matter, 
which  thought  takes  cognizance  of,  and  back  of  thought,  which 
takes  cognizance  of  itself,  lies  infinity,  which   envelops  both 
of   them,  and   which   seems   the   most   fundamental  aspect  of 
matter  itself.     It   was  not   without   reason   that   the   ancients 
called  matter,   abstractly   considered,  as    independent   of   its 
diverse    forms,    the    infinite   aireipov.     Materialism  thus  leaves 
us,  as  other  systems  do,  in  the  presence  of  tliat  ultimate  mys- 
tery which  all  religions  have   symbolized    in  their  myths,  and 
which  metaphysics  will   always  be   obliged   to  recognize,   and 
poetry  to  express,  by  the  instrumentality  of  images. 

By  the  seaside  stood  a  great,  upright  mountain  that  pierced 
the  sky  like  an  arrow-head,  and  the  waves  beat  upon  its  base. 
In  the  morning,  when  the  first  light  of  the  sun 
Apologne.  torched  the  ancient  rocks,  they  shivered,  and  a 
voice  rose  from  the  gray  stones  and  mingled  with  the  sound 
made  by  the  blue  sea  ;  and  mountain  and  wave  conversed 
together.  The  sea  said :  "  The  lieavens  have  been  mirrored 
in  my  shifting  waves  a  million  years,  and  in  all  that  time  have 
held  as  high  aloof   from  me  and  stood  as  motionless."     And 


THE  PRIXCIPAL   METAPHYSICAL    HYPOTHESES.        493 

the  mountain  said  :  "  I  have  climbed  toward  the  heavens  a 
million  years,  and  they  are  still  as  high  above  me  as  ever." 
One  day  a  ray  of  sun  fell  smiling  upon  the  brow  of  the  moun- 
tain, and  the  mountain  questioned  it  on  the  distant  heavens 
from  which  it  came.  The  ray  was  about  to  reply,  but  was 
reflected  suddenly  from  the  mountain  to  the  sea,  and  from  a 
scintillating  wave  back  to  the  heavens  from  which  it  came. 
And  the  ray  is  still  en  route  across  the  infinite,  toward  the 
nebulae  of  Maia,  in  the  Pleiades,  which  were  so  long  invisible, 
or  toward  some  point  farther  still,  and  has  not  yet  replied. 

///.     Monism.      The  Fate  of  Worlds. 

The   word    infinite,  uTrctpov,  which   the   ancients  applied   to 

matter,  the   moderns   have  applied  to  mind.     The  reason,  no 

doubt,  is  that   matter  and   mind  are  two   aspects 

of  one   and   the  same  thing.      The  synthesis  of 

these  two  aspects  is  attempted  by  monism. 

I.   It  is  not  our  purpose  here   to   pass   judgment   upon   the 

theoretical  pretensions  of  monism  as  a  system  of  metaphysics. 

We   observe  simply  that   the    trend    of    modern 

Monism  to-day     thou^iht  is  toward   this  system.     Materialism  is 

prevalent.  — — '*» "--       —  -' 

simply  a  mechanical  monism,  the  fundamental 
law  of  which  is  conceived  as  capable  of  being  completely 
formulated  in  mathematical  terms.  Idealism  is  simply  a 
monism  the  essential  law  of  which  is  conceived  as  mental,  as 
pertaining  to  tlie  intelligence  or  to  the  will.  This  latter  form 
of  monism  numbers  many  adherents  in  Germany  and  in  Eng- 
land. In  France  it  has  been  advocated  by  M.  Taine,  and  we 
have  just  seen  that  it  is  maintained  at  the  present  moment 
under  a  somewhat  different  form  by  M.  Fouill^e,  who  regards 
it  as  a  reconciliation  of  naturalism  and  idealism,  and  no  doubt 
also  as  a  possible  reconciliation  between  what  is  essential  in 
pantheism  and  in  theism.'  In  our  judgment  the  balance  must 
be  more  evenly  trimmed  than  the  philosophers  above  cited 
have  done,  between  the  material  and  mental  aspects  of  exist- 

'  See  the  preceding  chapter. 


494  NOA'-RELIGIOA''  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

eiice,  between  objective  science  and  subjective,  conscious 
knowledge.  Monism,  therefore,  essentially  consists  simply 
in  a  hypothesis  that  combines  the  least  questionable  facts 
dealt  with  by  science,  those  which  are  inseparable  from  the 
elementary  facts  of  consciousness.  The  fundamental  unity 
imported  by  the  term  monism  is  not  to  be  confounded  with 
Spinoza's  unity  of  substance,  nor  with  the  absolute  unity 
advocated  by  the  Alexandrians,  nor  with  Spencer's  unknow- 
able force,  nor  with  anything  in  the  nature  of  a  final  cause, 
such  as  is  spoken  of,  for  example,  by  Aristotle.  Neither  do 
we  afifirm  the  existence  of  any  unity  of  figure  and  form  in  the 
universe.  We  are  content  to  admit,  by  a  hypothesis  at  once 
scientific  and  metaphysical,  the  fundamental  homogeneity  of 
all  things,  the  fundamental  identity  of  nature.  Monism,  in 
our  judgment,  should  be  neither  transcendent  nor  mystical, 
but  immanent  and  naturalistic.  The  world  is  one  continuous 
Becoming ;  there  are  not  two  kinds  of  existence  nor  two  lines 
of  development,  the  history  of  which  is  the  history  of  the 
universe. 

Instead  of  endeavouring  to  resolve  matter  into  mind  or  mind 

into  matter,  we  recognize  them  both  as  united  in  this  synthesis, 

which  science  itself  (and  science  is  a  stranger  to 

The  fundamen-  ....  ^  ... 

tal  conception  of     anythmg  m  the  nature  of  moral  or  religious  prej- 

philosophyis  udice)  is  obliged  to  recognize:  the  synthesis  known 
that  of  life.  .  ^  ^ 

as   life.     Science    tends    every  day   still    further 

to  extend  the  domain  of  life,  and  there  exists  no  fixed  point 

of  demarcation  between  the  organic  and  the  inorganic  world. 

We  do  not  know  whether  the  foundation    of  life  is   ivill,  or 

idea.^  or  tJiotight,  or  sensation,  although  in   sensation  we   no 

doubt   approach   the   central  point  ;  it  seems  to  us  probable 

simply  that  consciousness,  which  constitutes  for  us  everything, 

should  count  for  something  in  every  mode  of  being,  and  that 

there  is,  so  to  speak,  no  being  in  the  universe  which  is  entirely 

abstracted   from  self.     But,  leaving  these  hypotheses  to  one 

side,  what   we   can  afifirm   w^th   certainty   is  that   life,  by   the 

very  fact  of  its  development,  tends  to  engender  consciousness;] 

and    that    progress  in  life    ultimately   comes  to  be  one  with 

progress  in  consciousness,  in  which  what  is  movement  in  one 


THE  PRINCIPAL  METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES.        495 

aspect  is  sensation  in  another.  Considered  from  within  every- 
thing, even  the  intellectual  forms  of  time  and  space,  is  resolv- 
able by  the  psychologist  into  sensation  and  desire  ;'  and,  consid- 
ered from  without,  everything  is  resolvable  by  the  physicist 
into  emotion  ;  to  feel  and  to  move  seem  to  be  the  two  formulae 
that  express  the  entire  inner  and  outer  universe,  the  concave 
and  convex  aspects  of  things  ;  but  to  feel  that  one's  self  moves 
is  the  formula  that  expresses  self-conscious  life  which  is 
still  so  infrequent  in  the  great  totality  of  things,  but  which  is 
becoming  increasingly  more  common.  The  very  meaning  of 
progress  in  life  consists  in  what  is  expressed  by  the  gradual 
fusion  of  these  two.  Life  means,  in  fact,  development  toward 
sensation  and  thought. 

Side  by  side  with  the  tendency  which  life  thus  displays  to 
take   possession   of  itself  by  consciousness,  it   seeks  to  widen 
the  sphere   of  its  operation  by  a  more  and  more 
activist ^^  profound  activity.     Life  is  productivity.     At  the 

lowest  stage  of  consciousness  life  leads  only  to 
the  inner  development  of  the  solitary  cell  ;  at  the  highest 
stage  of  consciousness,  life  manifests  itself  in  intelligent  and 
moral  productivity.  Expansion,  far  from  being  opposed  to 
the  nature  of  life,  is  in  harmony  with  its  nature,  is  the  very 
condition  of  life,  properly  so  called,  just  as  in  generation  the 
need  to  engender  another  individual  results  in  that  individual's 
existence  being,  as  it  were,  a  condition  of  our  own.  The  fact 
is  that  life  does  not  consist  in  nutrition  only,  it  consists  in  pro- 
duction, and  pure  egoism  involves  not  an  expansion  of  self  but 
a  diminution  and  mutilation  of  self.  Also  the  individual,  by 
the  mere  fact  of  growth,  tends  to  become  both  social  and 
moral."  It  is  this  fact  of  the  fundamental  sociality  of  man-' 
kind  which  is  the  basis  of  the  moral  instinct,  and  of  what  isl 
most  profound  and  durable  in  the  religious  and  metaphysical 
instinct.  Metaphysical  speculation,  like  moral  action,  thus 
springs  from  the  very  source  of  life.  To  live  is  to  become  a 
conscious,  a  moral,  and  ultimately  a  philosophical  being.  Life 
is  activity  in  one  or  other  of  its  more  or  less  equivalent  forms: 

'See  the  author's  study  on  L'id/e  de  temps  {Revue  philosophiqtie,  April,  1S85). 
^  See  the  author's  Esquisse  d'tnie  morale,  p.  447,  et  seq. 


496  A'OX-RELIGIOX  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

moral  activity,  and  what  may  be  called  metaphysical  activity, 
that  is  to  say,  activity  of  thought,  binds  up  the  individual  with 
the  universe. 

Up  to  this  point  we  have  made  no  mention  of  anything  in 

the  nature  of  a  final  cause.      Morality,  in  our  judgment,  is  as 

independent  as  the  so-called  religious  instinct  of 

No  final  cause      anythincf  in  the  nature  of  a  primordial  end  and 

in  nature.  j  t^  .       .         .       .         . 

aim.  Morality  in  the  begmmng  is  simply  a  more 
or  less  blind,  unconscious,  or,  at  best,  subconscious  power.. 
As  this  power  becomes  endowed  with  self-consciousness,  it 
directs  itself  toward  more  and  more  rational  objects:  duty  is 
self-conscious  and  organized  morality.  Just  as  humanity 
moves  blindly  forward  without  in  the  first  instance  possessing 
any  notion  of  its  destination,  so  also  moves  nature. 

All  this  being  true,  what  is  the  destiny  of  mankind  in  the 

world?     Does  monism  allow  a  place  for  the  hopes  on  which 

„    .        ^        the  moral  and  metaphysical  sentiments  have  al- 

Monism  and  '■     ■'  i  v  j 

the  problem  of       ways  relied  in   their  effort  to  save  thought  and 
destiny.  good-will  from  the  charge  of  vanity? 

If  evolution  may  be  conceived  as  possessing  from  the  begin- 
ning a  certain  aim  and  as  being  on  the  whole  providential, — a 
metaphysical     hypothesis    which     unhappily    is 

N9.tTir3.l  96160"  r  •  •  /"^         '         1 

tionandthe  guiltless  of  the  smallest  trace  of  scientific  indue- 

possible  evolution  ^-Jqi^^ — [^  rnay  also  be  conceived  as  resulting  in 
°  ^°  ^'  beings  capable  of  proposing  to  themselves  a  cer- 

tain aim,  and  of  dragging  nature  after  them  toward  it.  Natu- 
ral selection  would  thus  finally  be  converted  into  moral  and, 
in  some  sort,  divine  selection.  Such  an  hypothesis  is,  no 
doubt,  as  yet  a  rash  one,  but  is  at  least  in  the  direction  of  the 
trend  of  scientific  thought,  and  it  is  not  formally  in  contradic- 
tion with  present  knowledge.  Evolution,  in  effect,  can  and 
will  produce  species  and  types  superior  to  humanity  as  we 
know  it ;  it  is  not  probable  that  we  embody  the  highest 
achievement  possible  in  life,  thought,  and  love.  Who  knows, 
indeed,  but  that  evolution  may  be  able  to  bring  forth,  nay, 
has  not  already  brought  forth,  what  the  ancients  called 
gods? 


THE   PRINCIPAL   METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES.        497 

Such  speculation  offers  a  permanent  support  for  what  is 
best  in  the  religious  sentiment  for  sociality,  not  only  with  all 
Possibilit  of  ^'^'"S  ^""^  knowing  beings,  but  with  the  creatures 
arresting  process  of  thought  and  Superior  power  with  which  we 
of  dissolution.  people  -the  universe.  Provided  such  beings  are 
in  no  sense  anti-real,  provided  they  might  somewhere  exist,  if 
not  in  the  present  at  least  in  the  future,  the  religious  senti- 
ment may  attach  itself  to  them  without  check  from  the  scien- 
tific sentiment.  And  in  so  doing  it  becomes  one  with  the 
metaphysical  and  poetic  impulse.  The  believer  is  transmuted 
into  a  philosopher  or  a  poet,  but  into  a  poet  whose  poetry  is 
his  life,  and  who  dreams  of  a  universal  society  of  real  or  possi- 
ble beings  who  shall  be  animated  to  a  goodness  of  will  analo- 
gous to  his  own.  The  statement  that  Feuerbach  proposed,  of 
what  is  essential  in  moral  and  religious  sentiment  (the  reaction 
of  human  desire  on  the  universe),  may  then  be  interpreted  in 
a  higher  sense  as  referring  to  a  desire  and  a  hope  both  that, 
first,  the  sociality  with  which  we  feel  ourselves  personally  to 
be  animated  may,  as  biology  would  lead  us  to  believe,  be  dis- 
covered in  all  beings  that  exist  at  the  summit  of  universal 
evolution  ;  and  second,  that  these  beings  thus  placed  at  the 
front  by  evolution,  will  one  day  succeed  in  securing  what 
they  have  gained,  in  preventing  dissolution,  and  that  they  may 
thereby  permanently  establish  in  the  universe  the  love  of  social 
or  rather  universal  well-beine. 

Thus  understood,  the   religious  sentiment  may  still  be  re- 
garded as  ultra-scientific,  but  no  longer  as  anti-scientific.       It 

_    ^.  ,  is,  no  doubt,  taking  much  for  granted  to  suppose 

The  highest  i        , 

possible concep-      that  beings  who  have  arrived  at  a  high  degree  of 
tion  in  the  realm     evolutioH  may  determine  from  that  point  on  the 

of  morals.  _  _  •'  ^ 

direction  that  the  evolutionary  process  is  to  take, 
but,  after  all,  since  we  are  unable  to  affirm  with  certitude  that 
such  is  not  or  may  not  become  the  fact,  the  moral  and  social 
sentiment  urges  us  to  act  in  such  manner  as  to  turn  as  far  as 
in  us  lies  the  process  of  evolution  in  that  direction.  If,  as  we 
have  said,  morality  is  a  species  of  productivity,  every  moral 
being  must  turn  his  eyes  toward  the  future,  must  hope  that 
his  work  will  not  die,  must  watch  over  the  safety  of  that  por- 


49^  NOX-RELIGIOX  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

tion  of  himself  that  he  has  delivered  to  someone  else — of  his 
love — by  which  not  only  he  has  devoted  himself  to  others, 
but  has  made  others  in  a  sense  his  own ;  has  acquired  rights 
over  them,  has  conquered  them,  so  to  speak,  by  subjecting 
himself  to  them.  By  labouring  for  humanity  and  for  the  uni- 
verse with  which  humanity  is  bound  up,  I  acquire  certain 
rights  over  the  universe.  There  arises  between  us  a  relation 
of  reciprocal  dependence.  The  highest  conception  of  morals 
and  metaphysics  is  that  of  a  sort  of  sacred  league  between  the 
higher  beings  of  the  earth,  and  even  of  the  universe,  for  the 
advancement  of  what  is  good. 

II.  What  scientific  facts  may  be  urged  in  bar  of  such 
hopes  as  to  the  destiny  of  the  universe  and  of  humanity? 

The  most  discouraging  aspect  of  the  theory  of  evolution  is 

that  of  dissolution,  which  seems  to  be  inevitably  incident  to  it. 

From   Heracleitus  to  Mr.  Spencer,  philosophers 

Immanence  of      j^^^,^    regarded    these    two   ideas  as   inseparable. 
dissolution.  °  _  '^ 

But  does  evolution  necessarily  result  in  dissolu- 
tion? Our  experience,  both  of  the  life  of  individuals  and  of 
worlds,  seems,  so  far  as  the  past  is  concerned,  to  make  for  a 
reply  in  the  ai^rmative.  Our  whole  acquaintance  has  been 
with  worlds  which  have  gone  or  are  going  to  shipwreck. 
When  the  corpse  of  a  sailor  is  thrown  into  the  sea,  his  friends 
take  notice  of  the  exact  point  of  latitude  and  longitude  at 
which  his  body  disappeared  in  the  ocean.  Two  figures  on  a 
bit  of  paper  are  all  that  exists  of  what  was  a  human  life.  An 
analogous  destiny  may  be  supposed  to  be  in  reserve  for  the 
terrestrial  globe  and  for  humanity  as  a  whole.  They  may 
some  day  sink  out  of  sight  in  space  and  dissolve  beneath  the 
moving  waves  of  ether;  and  at  that  period,  if  some  neighbour- 
ing and  friendly  star  observe  us,  it  may  take  the  latitude  and 
longitude  in  infinite  space  of  the  point  in  the  celestial  abyss 
where  we  disappeared — the  angle  made  by  the  last  rays  that 
left  the  earth  ;  and  the  measure  of  this  angle,  made  by  two 
extinct  rays,  may  be  the  sole  trace  to  remain  of  the  whole  sum 
of  human  effort  in  the  world  of  thought. 


THE  PRINCIPAL   METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES.        499 

Nevertheless,  the  duty  of  science  being  equally  in  its  denials 

and  in  its  .iffirmations  to  keep  within  the  limits  of  certainty,  it 

„    ,        ,  is  important  not  to  model  our  conception  of  the 
Has  been  od-  ^ 

served  in  the  luture  too  absolutely  upon  our  knowledge  of  the 

past  only.  p^^sj-_ 

Up  to  the  present  time  there  has  been  no  individual,  nor 
group  of  individuals,  nor  world  which  has  attained    complete 

The  future  self-consciousness,  complete  consciousness  of  its 

may  differ  from      life  and  of  the  laws  of  its  life.      We  are  unable, 

^^^^ '  therefore,  either  to  afifirm  or  to  demonstrate  that 

dissolution  is  essentially  and  eternally  incident  to  evolution 
by  the  very  law  of  being  :  the  law  of  laws  is  to  us  simply  x. 
If  thought  is  ever  to  understand  the  law  of  laws,  it  will  be  by 
realizing  the  law  in  its  own  person.  And  such  a  height  of 
development  is  conceivable  ;  if  it  is  impossible  to  prove  its 
existence,  it  is  still  more  impossible  to  prove  its  non-existence. 
It  may  be  that  if  complete  self-consciousness,  if  complete  con- 
sciousness is  ever  achieved,  it  will  produce  a  corresponding 
power  great  enough  to  arrest  the  process  of  dissolution. 
Beings  who  are  capable,  in  their  infinite  complication  of  move- 
ments in  the  world,  of  distinguishing  those  which  make  for 
evolution  as  against  those  which  make  for  dissolution,  might 
be  capable  of  defeating  the  latter  and  of  securing  the  unim- 
peded operation  of  the  former.  If  a  bird  is  to  cross  the  sea  it 
needs  a  certain  breadth  of  wing;  its  destiny  depends  on  some 
inches,  more  or  less,  of  feathers.  Seabirds  that  desert  the  shore 
before  their  wings  have  attained  the  proper  strength  are  one 
after  another  engulfed  in  the  waves,  but  when  their  wings  are 
full  grown  they  can  cross  the  ocean.  A  world  also  needs,  so 
to  speak,  a  certain  breadth  of  wing  to  secure  its  flight  in 
infinite  space — its  fate  depends  on  some  small  increments, 
more  or  less,  in  the  development  of  consciousness  ;  beings  may 
one  day  be  produced  capable  of  traversing  eternity  without 
danger  of  being  engulfed,  and  evolution  may  be  established 
once  for  all  in  security  against  a  recoil  ;  for  the  first  time  in 
the  onward  movement  of  the  universe  a  definitive  result  may  be 
achieved.     According  to  the  profound  symbolism  of  the  Greek 


SOO  NOJV.RELIGIO.V  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

religion,  time  is  the  father  of  worlds.  The  power  of  evolution 
which  the  moderns  regard  as  ruling  over  all  things  is  the 
ancient  Saturn  who  devours  his  offspring.  Which  of  his 
children  shall  deceive  him  and  vanquish  him — what  Jupiter 
shall  some  day  prove  strong  enough  to  chain  up  the  divine 
and  terrible  power  that  engendered  him  ?  The  problem  for 
him  when  he  shall  arise — for  this  god  of  light  and  intelligence 
— will  be  to  check  the  eternal  and  blind  impulse  of  destruction 
without  at  the  same  time  arresting  the  impulse  of  productiy- 
ity.  Nothing,  after  all,  can  justify  one  in  af^rming  scientifi- 
cally that  such  a  problem  is  forever  insoluble. 

The  great  resource  of  nature  is  number,  the  possible  combi- 
nations of  which  are  infinite  and  constitute  the  secret  of  the 
eternal  mechanism  of  the  universe.      Fortuitous 

The  ineihauBt-  ,  ■         •  ,         i        •  i  •    i     i  i  i 

ible resources  combmation  and  selection,  which  have  produced 
of  nature.  gQ  many  marvels  in  the  past,  may  give  rise  to  still 

greater  marvels  in  the  future.  It  is  on  that  fact  that  Hera- 
cleitus,  Empedocles,  Democritus,  and  later  the  men  like  La- 
place, Lamarck,  and  Darwin  based  their  conception  of  the  part 
played  by  chance  in  the  universe,  and  of  the  point  of  union 
between  luck  and  destiny.  There  is  in  the  history  of  the 
world — as  in  the  history  of  a  people,  a  belief,  or  a  science — a 
certain  number  of  partings  of  the  way,  where  the  least  impulse 
toward  one  side  or  toward  the  other  suf^ces  to  destroy  or  to 
preserve  the  accumulated  effort  of  centuries.  We  must  hap- 
pily have  passed  an  infinity  of  such  cross-roads  to  have  attained 
our  present  point  of  development.  And  at  each  new  point  of 
the  kind  we  encounter  once  more  the  same  danger  and  run 
the  same  risk  of  losing  everything  that  we  have  gained.  The 
number  of  times  that  a  fortunate  soldier  has  evaded  death  will 
not  make  the  next  shot  fired  at  him  deviate  a  millimetre  from 
its  appointed  path,  but  if  our  successes  in  the  past  are  no 
guarantee  of  success  in  the  future,  our  failures  in  the  past  do 
not  constitute  a  definitive  proof  of  failure  in  the  future. 

The  gravest  objection  that  can  be  urged  against  hopeful- 
ness, an  objection  which  has  hitherto  not  been  sufficiently 
considered,  and  which  M.  Renan  has  omitted  to  deal  with  in 
his  something  too  optimistic  "  Dialogues  " — is  that  of  the  eter- 


THE  PRINCIPAL    METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES.        501 

nity  rt  parte  post,  is  the   semi-abortion,  the  partial  miscarriage 

of   a  universe  which,  throughout  an  infinite  past,  has  proved 

itself  incapable  of  a  better  world  than  this.'     Still, 

XjV6I1  CIld.IlC6S 

that  the  future       if  that  fact  Constitutes  a  reason  for  looking  with 
may  not  resemble    iggg    confidence    toward    the    future,    it    cannot 

the  past.  1     r  ,  •  A         • 

be  regarded  as  a  ground  tor  despair.  An  m- 
finite  past  has  proved  to  be  more  or  less  sterile,  but  an  infinite 
future  may  prove  to  be  otherwise.  Even  taking  for  granted 
the  total  miscarriage  hitherto  of  the  labours  of  humanity  and 
of  the  infinity  of  extra-terrestrial  beings  who  no  doubt  coop- 
erate with  us,  there  remains,  so  far  as  the  future  is  concerned, 
mathematically  one  chance  out  of  every  two  of  success ;  and 
that  is  enough  to  debar  pessimism  forever  of  an  ultimate  tri- 
umph. If  the  mere  chances  of  the  dice,  by  which,  according  to 
Plato,  the  universe  is  governed,  have  as  yet  produced  nothing 
but  crumbling  worlds  and  caducous  civilization,  a  calculation 
of  probabilities  demonstrates  that  even  after  an  infinite  num- 
ber of  throws  the  result  of  the  present  cast  or  of  the  next  cast 
cannot  be  foreseen.  The  future  is  not  entirely  determined  by 
the  past  ivJiicJi  is  kiiozon  to  7is.  Future  and  past  are  recipro- 
cally related  and  the  one  cannot  be  absolutely  known  without 
the  other,  and  the  one  cannot  be  absolutely  divined  from  a 
knowledge  of  the  other.  Conceive  a  flower  in  bloom  at  some 
point  in  infinite  space — a  sacred  flower,  the  flower  of  thought; 
hands  have  been  groping  for  it  in  every  direction  throughout 
an  infinite  past;  some  have  touched  it  by  chance  and  then  lost 
it  again  before  they  could  seize  it.  Is  the  divine  flower  never 
to  be  plucked  ?  Why  not  ?  A  negative  answer  would  be  sim- 
ply the  outcome  of  discouragement,  not  the  expression  of 
probability.  Or  conceive,  once  more,  a  ray  of  light  following 
a  straight  line  through  space,  not  reflected  by  any  solid  atom 
or  molecule  of  air,  and  an  infinity  of  eyes  in  an  eternal  ob- 
scurity seeking  for  this  ray,  with  no  means  of  discovering  how 
near  to  them  or  how  far  from  them  it  may,  at  any  moment,  be. 
The  ray  pursues  its  way  unimpeded,  and  innumerable  open, 
ardent  eyes  long  for  it  and  sometimes  seem  to  feel  the  pres- 
ence of  the  luminous  wave  moving  forward  on  its  victorious 
'  See  on  this  subject  the  author's  Vers  d'un  philosophe,  p.  198. 


502  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

course.      Must  their  search  eternally  be  vain  ?     If  there  is  no 
definitive  reason  for  affirming  it,  there  is  still  less  any  categor- 
ical reason  for  denying  it.      It  is  a  matter  of  chance,  the  man 
of  science  might  say ;   it  is  a  matter,  also,  of  perseverance  and  | 
intelligence,  would  be  added  by  the  philosopher. 

The  fact  that  we  are  to-day  capable  of  stating  such  prob- 
lems in  regard  to  the  destiny  of  the  universe  seems  to  indicate 
„  .  ,  something  like    an    advance   in   the    direction  of 

Positive  evi-  ° 

deuce  of  ultimate  solving  them  ;  thought  is  unable  to  advance  upon 
*^°°®®*'  reality  beyond  a  certain  point ;  the  conception  of 

an  ideal  presupposes  the  existence  of  a  more  or  less  imperfect 
realization  of  it.  In  the  tertiary  period  no  animal  speculated 
about  the  universal  society,  A  true  conception  of  the  ideal, 
if  the  truth  about  the  matter  could  be  known  mathematically, 
would  be  found  to  possess,  in  all  probability,  an  enormous 
number  of  chances  of  being  realized  ;  properly  to  state  a  prob- 
lem is  to  have  begun  to  solve  it.  A  purely  mathematical  cal- 
culation of  the  external  probabilities  of  the  case  does  not, 
therefore,  express  the  real  value  in  the  domain  of  intelligence 
and  morality,  because  in  matters  of  intelligence  and  morality, 
possibility,  probability,  and  the  powers  upon  which  the  reali- 
zation of  the  fact  depends,  lie  in  thought  which  is  a  concentra- 
tion of  inner  and,  so  to  speak,  living  chances. 

Over  and  above  infinity  of  number  and   eternity  of  time,  a 

field   of    hopefulness  lies  in  the  immensity   of  space,  which 

makes  it  irrational  for  us  to  judge  too  absolutely 

wheVtheTnLty    ©f  the  future  of  the  universe  solely  from  our  ex- 

of  space  is  taken     perience  of  SO  small  a  portion  of  it   as  our  solar, 

into  acconnt.  ,  ^    ,,  ^  »  ^u  i 

and  even  as  our  stellar  system.  Are  we  the  only 
thinking  beings  in  the  universe?  We  have  already  seen  that, 
without  passing  far  beyond  what  science  holds  to  be  certain, 
one  may  even  now  reply  in  the  negative.  There  very  probably 
exists  an  infinity  of  cold  or  cooling  stars,  which  have  arrived 
at  about  the  same  point  in  their  evolution  as  our  earth  ;  each 
of  these  stars  is  physically  and  chemically  analogous  to  the 
earth,  and  they  must  have  passed  through  analogous  stages  of 
vapourization,  and  condensation,  and  incandescence,  and  cool- 
ing.     It  is  therefore  probable  that  they  have  given    rise   to 


THE   PRIXCIPAL   METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES.        503 

forms  of  organic  life  more  or  less  analogous  to  those  that  we 
are  acquainted  with.  In  effect,  the  homogeneity  of  the  organic 
matter  of  which  our  stellar  system  is  composed  (a  fact  which 
spectral  analysis  enables  us  to  ascertain  in  regard  to  even  the 
most  remote  stars)  allows  us  to  infer,  by  an  induction  which  is 
not  too  improbable,  a  certain  similitude  in  the  most  funda- 
mental types  of  organic  life.  Analogous  types  of  mineralization 
and  crystallization  must  have  given  rise  to  analogous  types  of 
organization,  although  the  number  and  richness  of  the  forms 
that  are  possible  increase  as  existence  grows  more  complex. 
We  do  not  see  why  the  primordial  protoplasm  should  in  such 
and  such  a  satellite  of  Sirius  be  especially  different  from  that 
of  our  globe ;  nay,  there  may  even  obtain  a  certain  cycle  of 
forms  and  "  living  numbers,"  as  Pythagoras  would  say,  that 
periodically  recur.  It  is  difficult  in  the  actual  state  of  science 
to  conceive  life  as  appearing  except  in  some  form  of  matter 
analogous  to  the  cellule,  and  to  conceive  consciousness  as 
otherwise  than  centralized  in  and  manifesting  itself  by 
vibrations  such  as  those  to  which  our  nervous  systems  are 
subject.  Conscious  life  implies  a  society  of  living  beings,  a 
sort  of  social  consciousness  which  the  individual  consciousness 
seems,  in  a  sort,  to  presuppose.  Organic  and  conscious  life, 
the  conditions  of  which  are  so  much  more  determinate  than 
those  of  inorganic  life,  must  everywhere,  in  spite  of  differences 
in  the  circumstances,  have  assumed  in  the  course  of  evolution 
forms  that,  in  a  number  of  respects,  must  have  been  analogous 
to  animals  and  human  beings  such  as  we  are  familiar  with. 
Perhaps  the  most  general  of  the  laws  formulated  by  Geoffrey 
Saint-Hilaire  on  the  correlation  of  organs  might  be  found  to 
hold  good  of  the  animals  existing  on  the  satellites  of  distant 
stars  of  the  twentieth  magnitude.  In  spite  of  the  infinite 
variety  of  the  flora  and  fauna  of  our  globe,  and  the  seemingly 
inexhaustible  ingenuity  that  nature  has  displayed  in  varying 
their  forms,  it  may  reasonably  be  surmised  that  the  difference 
between  the  types  of  life  with  which  we  are  acquainted  and 
those  with  which  we  are  not  acquainted  is  subject  to  certain 
considerable  limitations.  In  spite  of  differences  of  tempera- 
ture, of  light,  of  attraction,  of  electricity,  sidereal  species,  how 


504  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

different  soever  they  may  be  from  terrestrial  species  of  living 
beings,  must,  by  the  necessities  of  the  case,  have  been  devel- 
oped in  the  direction  of  sensitiveness  and  of  intelligence,  and 
have  gone  in  that  direction  sometimes  not  as  far  as  we,  some- 
times farther.  Note  also  that  even  on  our  globe  the  excessively 
odd  and  monstrous  types  produced,  like  those  of  the  tertiary 
period,  as  it  were  in  obedience  to  a  sort  of  apocalyptic  imag- 
ination, have  proved  unable  to  maintain  themselves.  The 
most  enduring  species  have  generally  been  the  least  eccentric, 
the  closest  to  a  uniform  and  aesthetic  type.  It  is  not  excessively 
improbable,  therefore,  that  the  universe  contains  an  infinite 
number  of  human  species  analogous  to  humanity  as  we  know 
it,  in  all  essential  faculties,  although,  perhaps,  very  different  in 
the  form  of  their  organs  and  in  the  degree  of  their  intelligence. 
They  are  our  planetary  brothers.  Perhaps  by  comparison  with 
us  they  are  gods  ;  and  in  that  fact  lies,  as  we  have  said,  the 
kernel  of  possible  or  actual  truth  in  the  ancient  beliefs  in  re- 
gard to  the  divine  inhabitants  of  the  skies.' 

'  To  understand  the  enormous  differences  which,  in  spite  of  the  analogies,  may 
exist  between  the  organization  of  the  planetary  or  stellar  beings  and  our  own,  it 
suffices  to  consider  the  immense  variety  which  obtains  among  terrestrial  species. 
Ants  have  already  achieved  an  advanced  state  of  society  with  their  shepherd, 
labouring,  and  warrior  castes.  Suppose  them  to  continue  their  intellectual  devel- 
opment instead  of  halting  at  a  mechanical  life  of  instinct  ;  they  might  arrive  at  a 
point  of  mental  evolution  analogous,  mutatis  mutandis,  to  that  of  such  and  such  a 
human  society  ;  for  example,  that  of  the  Chinese.  Who  knows,  indeed,  but  that 
they  might  rule  the  earth  by  virtue  of  substituting  number  and  intelligence  for 
individual  power?  Their  civilization  would  be  in  some  sort  Liliputian,  and  des- 
tined, no  doubt,  to  exercise  a  smaller  influence  on  the  course  of  things  than  that 
of  which  physically  stronger  beings  might  prove  capable  ;  or,  to  pass  from  one 
extreme  to  the  other,  in  the  dreamland  in  which  Fontenelle,  Diderot,  and  Voltaire 
have  laboured,  conceive  a  race  of  human  beings  developed  not  from  anthropoids, 
but  from  the  next  most  intelligent  members  of  the  animal  kingdom— from  elephants. 
Scientifically,  the  supposition  is  not  impossible,  when  it  is  considered  that  the  ele- 
phant's trunk  is  at  once  one  of  the  strongest  and  most  delicate  organs  of  prehension 
known  to  us,  and  that  to  possess  a  well-developed  brain  and  good  organs  of  pre- 
hension are  perhaps  the  prime  requisites  for  success  in  the  struggle  for  existence. 
A  giant  civilization,  therefore,  quite  different  from  ours  in  externals,  if  not  in 
essentials,  might  well  have  been  achieved  on  the  earth  or  on  some  neighbouring 
star.  However  repugnant  to  our  instinctive  anthropomorphism,  we  should  famil- 
iarize ourselves  with  the  thought  that  if  evolution  is  subject  to  necessary  laws,  a 
simple  series  of  accidents  and  favourable  circumstances  may  give  such  and  such  a 


THE  PRIA'CIPAL   METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES.        505 

But,  it  has  been  said,  if  other  globes  than  ours  are  inhabited 

by  intelHgent  and  affectionate  beings  who  Hve  as  we  do  upon 

the  daily  bread   of  science,  these   beings   cannot 

Objections  ^g   notably  superior  to   us,  or  they   would   have 

answered.  .         . 

given  us  before  this  time  visible  signs  of  their 
existence.  To  argue  thus  is  not  sufficiently  to  take  account 
of  the  terrible  power  of  space  to  imprison  beings  in  infinite 
isolation.  It  may  well  be  doubted  whether  beings  of  a  rela- 
tively infinite  intelligence,  as  compared  with  us,  would  not  find 
their  power  unequal  to  dealing  with  such  spaces  as  separate 
the  stars.  Our  testimony  on  a  question  of  the  existence  of 
such  beings  has  no  more  value  than  that  of  a  flower  in  the 
polar  regions,  or  a  bit  of  moss  on  the  Himalayas,  or  a  bit  of 
weed  in  the  depths  of  the  Pacific  Ocean,  would  have  if  it  should 
declare  the  earth  to  be  void  of  really  intelligent  beings  on  the 
ground  that  they  had  never  been  plucked  by  a  human  hand. 
If,  therefore,  the  universe  somewhere  contains  beings  really 
worthy  of  the  name  of  gods,  they  are  probably  so  distant 
from  us  that  they  are  as  unaware  of  our  existence  as  we  are  of 
theirs.  They  perhaps  have  realized  our  ideals,  and  the  fact 
of  that  realization  will  perhaps  remain  unknown  to  us  to  the 
end. 

It  is  to-day  admitted  that  every  thought  corresponds  to  a 
certain  kind  of  motion.  Suppose  that  an  analysis  more  deli- 
cate even  than  that  of  the  spectrum  should  enable  us  to  record 

species  the  advantage  over  such  and  such  another,  and  invert  the  comparative  dignity 
of  the  two  without  the  general  onward  movement  of  evohition  being  checked. 

Moreover,  the  development  of  intelligence  in  a  planet  depends  much  less  on  the 
bodily  form  and  number  of  the  inhabitants  than  on  the  nature  of  their  life  ;  and 
as  their  life  depends  upon  phenomena  of  heat,  light,  electricity,  and  the  chemical 
modifications  that  they  produce,  it  is  these  phenomena  that  in  some  sort  decide  the 
intellectual  future  of  the  planet.  Kant  threw  out  the  suggestion  that  in  an  astro- 
nomic system,  for  example — in  our  solar  system — the  intellectual  and  moral  perfec- 
tion of  the  inhabitants  increases  with  their  aloofness  from  the  central  star,  and 
thus  follows  a  lowering  of  the  temperature  ;  but  such  a  hypothesis  is  much  too 
simple  to  account  for  so  complex  an  effect,  and  one  which  is  dependent  upon  many 
other  things  than  temperature.  What  is  probable,  from  the  phenomena  of  life  as 
we  know  them,  is  that  thought  could  scarcely  be  developed  either  in  a  brazier  or  a 
glacier,  and  that  a  certain  mean  is  a  necessary  condition  of  organic  and  intellectual 
development. 


5o6  NON-RELIGIOX  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

and   to   distinguish,   not  only  vibrations   of  light   but   the  in- 
visible vibrations  of  thought  in  distant  worlds.     We  should, 

perhaps,  be   surprised   to   see  that  in  proportion 
Possibility  of  ,       ,.    ,  ,   ,  r     ,       •  , 

discovering  as  tlie  light  and  heat  of  the  incandescent  stars  de- 

inhabitants in        crease,    there    by    degrees    arises   consciousness, 

other  spheres.  '  ° 

and  that  the  smallest  and  most  obscure  stars  are 

the  first  to  produce  it,  whereas  the  most  brilliant  and  enormous, 

like  Sirius  and   Aldebaran,  are  the   last  to   feel  these  subtler 

vibrations,  but   feel   them   ultimately   with  greater  power,  and 

develop  a  humanity  with   faculties  and  powers  proportionate 

to  their  enormity. 

The  total  amount  of  space  which   is  known  to  us,  from  our 

earth  to  the  farthest  nebulse  that  the  telescope  renders  visible, 

and  to  the  dark  depths  beyond,  is  no  more  than 
Slowness  of  .  i  ,       , 

spread  of  civiliza-  ^  mere  point  as  compared  with  the  totality  of 
tion  from  star  to  ^j^g  universe — supposing  always  that  there  is  a 
totality.  Eternity  may,  therefore,  be  necessary 
for  progress  to  traverse  the  immensity  of  space,  if  one  con- 
ceives progress  (if  such  a  thing  exists  at  all)  as  starting  from 
some  one  point  of  departure,  from  a  sort  of  holy-land  and  elect 
people,  and  spreading  from  them  out  in  all  directions  into  the 
infinite.  Modern  science,  of  course,  scarcely  permits  one  to 
believe  in  so  privileged  a  land.  Illimitable  nature  scarcely 
possesses,  after  the  fashion  of  God,  exclusive  election.  If  the 
ideal  has  been  achieved  in  one  place,  it  must  also,  in  all  prob- 
abilit}^,  have  been  achieved  in  a  number  of  others,  although 
the  wave  of  progress  has  not  yet  spread  tons.  Intellectual 
light  travels  less  rapidly  than  solar  and  stellar  light,  and  yet 
how  long  it  takes  a  ray  to  come  to  us  from  Capricornus  ! 

In  our  inferior  organisms,  consciousness  does  not  seem  to  pass 

from  one  living  molecule  to  another  unless  they  are  contig- 

Possibility  of      ^^^"^  i"  space  ;  still,  according  to  the  most  recent 

mind  acting  on       discovcries  in  regard  to  the   nervous  system,  and 
mind  at  a  distance,  i.       .1  ,•  e    L^  1.1  ,1 

to  the  propagation  of  thought  by  mental  sug- 
gestion from  a  distance,'  it  is  not  contrary  to  the  facts  to  con- 
ceive the  possibility  of  a  sort  of  radiation  of  consciousness 
through  space  by  means  of  undulations  of  a  degree  of  subtlety 
as  yet  unknown  to  us.     It  is  not  utterly  unpermissible  to  con- 

'  See  tlie  Revue philosophique,  1886. 


THE  PRINCIPAL   METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES.        507 

ceive  a  society  of  consciousnesses  not  hemmed  into  some  small 
corner  of  the  universe,  each  in  a  narrow  organism  which  is  a 
prison,  but  communicating  freely  with  each  other  throughout 
the  whole  expanse  of  space  ;  it  is  not  utterly  unpermissible  to 
conceive  the  ultimate  realization  of  the  ideal  of  universal 
sociality  which  constitutes  the  basis  of  the  religious  instinct. 
Just  as  out  of  a  more  intimate  communication  with  individ- 
ual consciousnesses  there  may  arise  upon  our  earth  a  sort  of 
collective  consciousness,  so  it  is  not  ridiculous  to  suppose  that 
there  may  arise,  in  an  infinity  of  ages,  a  sort  of  intercosmic 
consciousness. 

God  is  patient  because  he  is  eternal,  theologians  are  fond 
of  saying.  In  an  all-powerful  being  patience  of  evil  would  be 
a  crime ;  patience,  which  can  scarcely  be  ascribed 
with  any  propriety  to  God,  belongs  however  most 
fitly  to  a  being  who  is  aware  of  his  fundamental  unity  with  the 
totality  of  things,  and  is  conscious  of  his  eternity  as  a  member 
of  the  human  species,  as  a  member  of  the  brotherhood  of  liv- 
ing beings  of  which  the  human  species  is  simply  an  accident, 
as  a  part  of  the  evolution  of  this  globe  in  which  conscious  life 
itself  at  first  appears  as  no  more  than  an  accident,  and  of  the 
evolution  of  the  vast  astronomical  systems  in  which  our 
globe  is  no  more  than  a  point.  Man  may  be  patient  because, 
as  an  inseparable  part  of  nature,  he  is  eternal. 

IV.  The  destiny  of  the  human  race  and  the  hypothesis  of  im- 
mortality from  the  point  of  viezv  of  monism. 

Next  to  the  fate  of  the  universe,  what  interests  us  most 
vitally  is  the  question  of  our  own  destiny.     Religion  consists 

for  the  most  part  in  a  meditation  on  death.  If 
tion an7death.° ^"  death  were  not  an  incident  of  life  mankind  would] 

nevertheless  be  superstitious,  but  superstition 
would  probably  never  have  been  systematized  into  religions. 
The  mass  of  society  possesses  so  slight  an  interest  in  meta- 
physics !  A  problem  must  bruise  and  wound  them  to  attract 
their  attention  ;  and  death  prevents  such  problems.  Will  the 
gates  of  the  valley   of  Jehoshaphat,   through    which  the  dead 


5o8  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

must  pass,  open  on  the  heavens  Hke  a  rainbow  made  of  light 
and  hope,  Hke  a  joyous  triumphal  arch,  or  will  it  be  low  as  the 
door  of  the  tomb,  and  open  upon  infinite  darkness  ?  Such  is 
the  great  question  to  which  all  religions  have  endeavoured  to 
furnish  a  response.  "The  last  enemy  that  shall  be  vanquished 
is  death,"  says  St.  Paul ;  perhaps  that  also  represents  the  last 
secret  that  shall  be  penetrated  by  human  thought.  The  ideas 
which  tend  to  become  dominant  in  modern  philosophy  seem, 
however,  to  exclude  the  notion  of  the  perpetuity  of  the  self. 
The  conception  of  evolution  principally  is  based  on  a  theory 
of  mobility,  and  appears  to  result  in  the  dissolution  of  the  in- 
dividual, with  even  a  greater  certainty  than  in  that  of  the 
species  or  the  world.  The  individual  form,  and  the  species 
form,  are  equally  unstable.  On  the  walls  of  tiie  catacombs 
may  often  be  seen,  roughly  designed,  the  dove,  bringing  back 
to  the  ark  the  green  bough,  the  symbol  of  the  soul  which  has 
passed  beyond  the  ocean  and  discovered  the  eternal  harbour; 
at  the  present  day  the  harbour  recoils  ad  infinitum,  before 
human  thought ;  limitless  open  sea  stretches  away  before  it  .- 
where  in  the  abyss  of  bottomless  and  limitless  nature  shall  be 
found  the  branch  of  hope.     Death  is  a  wider  void  than  life. 

When  Plato  approached  the  problem  of  destiny,  he  did  not 
hesitate  to  launch  out  into  philosophical  hypotheses,  and  even 
into  poetical  myths.  It  is  our  present  purpose  to 
life  after  death  at  examine  what  are  to-day  the  suppositions,  or,  if 
the  present  day,  y^^^  choose,  the  dreams  that  may  still  be  enter- 
tained as  to  the  future  by  a  sincere  believer  in  the  dominant 
philosophy  of  the  present  day,  the  philosophy  of  evolution. 
Given  the  present  conception  of  nature,  would  Plato  have 
found  himself  cut  off  from  those  beautiful  expectations  to  the 
charm  of  which  he  said  we  ought  to  submit  ourselves?  In 
Germany,  and  in  especial  in  England,  it  is  not  uncommon  to 
endeavour  to  discover  how  much  of  the  antique  religious 
beliefs  still  subsists,  and  is,  in  however  problematic  and  uncer- 
tain a  form,  involved  in  the  scientific  and  philosophic  hypoth- 
eses of  the  day.  It  is  our  purpose  to  undertake  here  an 
analogous  inquiry  in  regard  to  immortality,  recognizing  how 
conjectural  any  attempt  to  solve  the  mystery  of  fate  must  be. 


THE  PRINCIPAL   METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES.        509 

Is  it  necessary  to  say  that  we  make  no  pretensions  to  "  demon- 
strating "  either  the  existence  or  even  the  scientific  probability 
of  a  life  after  death  ?  Our  design  is  more  modest ;  it  is 
enough  to  show  that  the  impossibility  of  such  a  life  is  not  yet 
proven  ;  even  in  the  presence  of  modern  science  immortality 
is  still  a  problem  ;  if  this  problem  has  not  received  a  positive 
solution,  no  more  has  it  received  a  negative  solution. 

It  is  our  intention  further  to  consider  what  bold,  and  even 
adventurous  hypotheses  may  be  necessary  to  enable  one  to 
translate  into  philosophic  language  the  sacred  symbols  of 
religion,  or  the  destiny  of  the  soul. 

I.  There  are  two  possible  conceptions  as  to  life  after  death  ; 
that  of  eternal  existence  and  that  of  immortality,  properly  so 
called,  or  continuation  and  evolution  of  life  under 
idealism  ^""^  a  superior  form.  The  first  conception  corre- 
sponds more  particularly  to  the  idealistic  theories 
of  the  world,  which  we  have  analyzed  above,  which,  re- 
garding the  basis  of  things  as  an  eternal  thought,  a  thought  of 
thought,  believe  that  by  identifying  itself  with  it  mankind 
might  pass  out  of  time  into  eternity.  Thought,  which  seems 
at  first  no  more  than  a  reverberation  and  image  of  things,  ideal- 
ists believe,  turns  out  in  the  last  analysis  to  be  the  very 
reality  of  which  all  the  rest  of  the  world  is  but  a  reflection ; 
but  this  conception  of  an  eternal  existence  is  not  in  the  least 
incompatible  with  the  philosophy  of  evolution,  for  evolution 
in  time  does  not  exclude  a  transcendent  mode  of  existence  out 
of  time.  Such  an  existence,  however,  remains  essentially 
problematic  ;  it  corresponds  to  Kant's  Noumenon  and  Spen- 
cer's Unknowable ;  according  to  this  hypothesis,  corporal 
death  is  simply  a  stage  in  physical  evolution,  and  the  final 
term  to  be  attained  by  all  beings  is  their  fixation  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  eternity.  This  point  of  fixation,  accessible  to 
every  thinking  being,  is  to  be  attained  only  by  the  highest, 
most  disinterested,  impersonal,  and  universal  thought  possible. 
Such  is  the  hope  which  lies  at  the  bottom  of  the  great 
religions,  and  the  great  idealistic  systems  of  metaphysics. 
According  to   Plato  there  is  nothing  durable  in  us  but  what 


5IO  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

relates  to  the  eternal,  and  to  the  universal,  and  is  therefore  of 
the  same  nature  as  they  are.     All  the  rest  is  eliminated  by  Be- 
coming,   by    perpetual    Generation,    that    is,    by 

An  eternal  ele-   evolution.     A  flovver  is,  in  our  eyes,  a  friend;    it 
ment  in  man.  ^ 

owes  its  colour  and  charm,  however  simple,  to  a 
ray  of  the  sun  ;  but  this  ray,  to  which  our  affection  is  due,  is 
wholly  impersonal  ;  it  creates  the  beauty  of  the  flower,  and 
passes  on  its  way ;  and  it  is  the  sun  that  we  should  love,  both 
for  the  ray  and  the  flower.  Too  exclusive  and  limited  affecr 
tion  is  always  based  on  some  mistake,  and  is  on  that  account 
perishable.  It  insists  on  our  stopping  at  such  and  such  a  link 
in  the  infinite  chain  of  causes  and  effects.  It  is  the  principle 
of  the  universe,  it  is  the  universal  being  that  we  must  love,  if 
our  heart  is  big  enough,  and  it  is  that  love  alone,  according  to 
Plato,  which  is  eternal.  Is  not  eternity  the  very  form  of  ex- 
istence in  the  intelligible  world,  in  which  Goodness  is  the  sun 
and  the  Ideas  are  the  stars  ?  Christian  neo-Platonists,  over  and 
above  Time  and  its  incessant  mobility,  have  dreamed  of  an 
intemporal  and  immutable  somewhat,  that  they  call  the  life 
eternal:  Qike  enim  videntur,  temporalia  sunt;  quce  autein  7io7i 
videntur,  ceterna.  Spinoza  has  dealt  with  the  same  concep- 
tion of  an  existence  under  the  form  of  eternity,  which  does 
not  exclude  the  perpetual  development  of  changing  modes. 
Kant  also,  by  his  word  Noiimenon,  designated  an  intelligible, 
intemporal,  transcendent  somewhat,  that  lay  beyond  the  scope 
of  physical  evolution.  "  The  eternal  evolution  of  the  soul," 
Schelling  has  said  in  his  turn,  "  is  not  eternal  in  the  sense  that 
it  possesses  neither  a  beginning  nor  an  end,  but  in  that  it 
bears  no  relation  to  Time."  And  Schopenhauer,  finally,  be- 
lieves in  an  intemporal,  eternal  will,  which  is  distinguished  from 
the  will  to  live  that  belongs  to  time  and  to  the  evolution  of 
temporal  forms.  "  We  willingly  recognize,"  says  Schopen- 
hauer, "  that  what  remains  after  the  complete  abolition  of  the 
will  is  absolutely  nothing  to  those  w^ho  are  still  full  of  the 
desire  of  life,  but  for  those  in  whom  desire  is  annihilated 
what  does  our  evil  world,  with  its  sun  and  its  Milky  Way, 
amount  to  ?  Nothing."  It  is  with  these  words  that  Schopen- 
hauer closes  his  book.     He  brings  us  once  more  into  the  pres- 


THE   rRhXCIPAL   METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES.         511 

ence  of  Nirvd)ia,  conceived  not  only  as  a  refuge  from  life,  but 
also  as  a  refuge  from  death ;  as  an  existence  that  shall 
be  placeless  and  timeless,  and,  so  to  speak,  titopian  (in  its 
primary  intention)  and  achronistic. 

Rut  is  this  eternal  life,  the  fact  of  which  is,  as  we  have  seen, 

problematic,  altogether  impersonal  or  not  ?     No  certain  reply 

T      ,  can   be   given  since  we  are  as  ignorant    of  the 

is  such  immor-  °  _  ° 

taiity  personal  or  essence  of  individual  being  as  of  the  essence  of  uni- 
"^"^  versal  being,  and  consequently  of  the  degree  to 

which  it  is  possible  for  individuality  to  subsist  in  universality. 
Schopenhauer,  however,  in  his  endeavour  to  ascribe  to  the  in- 
dividual a  greater  amount  of  reality  than  Plato  allowed, 
opposed  the  principle  of  individuation  to  the  natural  individu- 
alities in  which  it  manifests  itself,  and  it  may,  indeed,  be  asked, 
whether  genuine  consciousness,  genuine  thought,  and  genuine 
volition  do  not  at  once  pass  beyond  the  individual,  and  pre- 
serve what  is  most  essential  in  the  individual.  Individuality 
is  always  more  or  less  physical,  but  it  is  possible  that  what 
makes  individuality  limited  is  not  of  the  essence  of  person- 
ality, of  consciousness  ;  perhaps  what  is  best  in  thought  and 
will  may  become  universal,  without  ceasing  in  the  best  sense 
to  be  personal  like  the  Nous  of  Anaxagoras.' 

'  At  the  very  centre  of  one's  being,  universality  and  personality  increase  side  by 
side;  that  is  to  say,  the  greater  the  share  of  existence  a  being  possesses,  the  greater 
the  amount  of  existence  that  it  is  capable  of  sharing  with  other  beings.  Incom- 
municability  or  impenetrability  represents  the  lowest  degree  of  existence;  natural 
existence,  the  existence  of  forces  as  yet  blind  and  fatal,  maintains  by  their  mutual 
antagonism  an  equilibrium  in  a  state  of  inertia  and  torpor  .  .  .  The  greater  one's  self- 
appropriation  by  intelligence,  the  greater  one's  power  of  taking  possession  of  other 
beings  by  thought  ;  the  being  that  best  knows  itself  best  knows  other  beings  .  .  . 
the  spirit,  in  so  far  as  it  is  intelligent,  should  be  open,  penetrable,  participable, 
and  participant.  Two  minds,  in  so  far  as  they  are  perfect,  may  interpenetrate  each 
other  by  means  of  thought  (A.  Fouillee,  Philosophie  de  Platoit). 

"  We  must  distinguish,"  M.  Janet  also  says,  "  between  personality  and  individu- 
ality. Individuality  consists  in  all  the  external  circumstances  which  distinguish  one 
man  from  another — circumstjinces  of  time,  place,  organization,  etc.  .  .The  root  of 
personality  lies  in  individuality,  but  it  tends  incessantly  to  withdraw  from  it.  The 
individual  is  centred  in  himself  ;  personality  aspires  to  rise  above  itself.  The  ideal 
of  individuality  is  egoism,  the  focussing  of  the  whole  in  self  ;  the  ideal  of  person- 
ality is^^otion,  the  identification  of  self  with  the  whole.  Personality,  properly 
so  called,  re  consciousness  of  the  impersonal  "  {Moral,  573). 


512  NON-RELIGIOX  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

Speculate  as  we  may  upon  individual  and  universal  being, 

we  are  all  but  brought   face  to  face  in  the  end  with  the  same 

transcendental^.    Such  speculations,  however,  are 

No  positive  .  ,  ...  i      ,       r  . 

knowledge  to  op-    'lot  Without  a  Certain    utility,  that  ot  impressing 
pose  to  hypothesis   us  afresh  with  the   limits  of  our  knowledge.     A 

of  immortality.  . 

belief  in  a  transcendent  immortality,  as  riske 
says,  can  be  defined  only  negatively,  as  a  refusal  to  believe 
that  this  world  is  everything.  The  materialist  maintains, 
Fiske  says,  that  when  we  have  described  the  entire  universe  of 
phenomena,  of  which  we  are  capable  of  taking  cognizance  un- 
der the  conditions  of  this  life,  the  whole  of  the  story  has  been 
told.  Fiske  himself  believes,  on  the  contrary,  that  the  whole 
has  not  then  been  told.'  We  may  at  least  say  that  it  \s  possible 
that  the  whole  story  has  not  then  been  told.  But  to  pass 
from  the  possible  to  the  probable,  no  conclusion  of  the  kind  can 
be  considered  satisfactory  that  is  not  based  upon  more  positive 
reason,  psychological  or  moral  ;  unsupported  metaphysical 
speculations  leave  the  mind  simply  in  the  presence  of  a  problem. 

Theories  in  regard  to  an  eternal  life  such  as  we  above  men- 
tioned have  always  proved  in  history  more  or  less  aristocratic 
„,,    ,      o    .     and   inclined   to   limit  the   number  of  the  elect. 

The  hypothesis 

of  a  conditional  In  Buddhism  the  sage  alone  is  capable  of  achiev- 
eternity,  j^^^  eternal  existence,  whereas  all  the  rest  of  man- 

kind are  condemned  to  life  in  time  and  illusion.  Spinoza 
recognizes  eternity  only  in  what  he  calls  cognition  of  the  third 
order,  intellectual  intuition  and  love.  Such  cognition  belongs 
properly  to  the  true  philosopher  only.  The  intelligence  of  the 
vulgar  is  passive  and  perishable.  "The  instant  the  vulgar 
cease  ...  to  suffer,"  says  Spinoza,  "  they  cease  to  exist."  And 
Goethe,  too,  was  inclined  to  regard  the  eternal  life  as  reserved 
for  an  aristocracy. 

This  theory  of  inequality  is  maintainable  only  in  so  far  as 

it  is  based  upon  an  actual  ascertainment  of  the  difference  in 

progress  displayed  by  different  minds,  and  of  the 

small  number  of  those  who  achieve   the  heights 

of  wisdom.     The  case  is  otherwise  when  such  an  observed  fact 

of  natural  or  moral  inequality  is  converted  into  a  divine  right, 

^  Fiske,  The  Destiny  of  Man,  p.  113. 


THE  PRINCIPAL   METAPHYSICAL    HYPOTHESES.        5^3 

and  God  is  conceived  as  creating  and  desiring  precisely  such  a 
state  of  things.      The  latter,  however,  is  the  alternative  that 
modern  Christian   theologians  have  adopted  in  their  effort  to 
offer  a  re-reading  of  the  sacred  texts.      In  their  judgment  the 
good  alone  are  immortal,  or,  rather,  arc  immortalized  by  God  ; 
the  others  are  damned,  in  the  sense  that  they  are  totally  anni- 
hilated— an   interpretation   of  the  dogma   of   eternal   punish- 
ment   that  seems   to  them  wholly   to    exculpate  the    Deity. 
Any  such  notion  is  based  upon  a  metaphysical  illusion.     The 
hypothesis  of  traditional   eternity  is  inconsistent  with  that  of 
the  existence  ofacreator,  since  it  is  forever  impossible  on  that 
hypothesis,  to  escape  the  contradiction  involved  in  the  notion 
of  a  being's  creating  only  to  destroy — of  a  being's  choosing 
amone  his  creatures  a  certain   number  for  condemnation  to 
death.      Annihilation  is  simply  damnation  palliated;    it  is  the 
substitution  of  a  celestial  guillotine  for  the  long  miseries  that 
have  preceded.     This  theological  hypothesis  affords  us  no  way 
out  of  the  difficulties  involved  in  the  doctrine  of  divine  sanc- 
tion that  lies  at  the  heart  of  all  religions ;    it  is  the  sacrifice  of 
Isaac,  or  of  Jesus,  in  another  form  simply.     Will  it  be  said 
that,  on  the  hypothesis  of  conditional  immortality,  the  immoral 
being  is  alone   responsible   for  his  own   death  ?     Yielding  to 
passion,  or  even  to  vice,  cannot  be  assimilated  to  suicide,   for 
in  suicide  one  knows  what  one  is  doing  and  is  responsible  for 
it;  one  kills  one's  self  because  one  wishes  to  die  ;  but  one  does 
not  wish  to  die  when  one  abandons  one's  self  to  a  passion  ; 
and,  if  the  result  therefore  of  so  doing  is  annihilation,  death 
comes  upon  one  unforeseen  and  undesired,  takes  one  by  sur- 
prise, by  a  sort  of  divane  ruse,  and  the  responsibility  for  such 
annihilation  lies  and  must  lie  with  God.      Moreover,  how  can 
there  exist  between  two  individuals  of  the  same  nature  a  suffi- 
ciently great  natural  or  moral  difference  to  justify  the  one's 
being  wholly  annihilated,  and  the  other's  being  permitted  to 
live  in  (Bternum  ?     It  may  be  said,  with  Plato  in  the  "  Repub- 
lic," that,  if  vice  were  a  disease  that   is  really  mortal   to  the 
soul,   it   would   kill   it   in    this   life.     Its  destructive    influence 
would  be  felt  long  before  the  occurrence  of  death,  which,  so 
far  as  vice  is  concerned,  is  an  accidental  circumstance  simply. 


514  NON-RELIGION  OF   THE  FUTURE. 

As  the  notion  of  conditional  immortality  is  incompatible 
with  the  notion  of  an  omnipotent,  omniscient,  sovereignly 
Is  incompatible  ^^^'^"S  creator,  so  also  is  it  with  that  of  a  society 
withhnman  of   souls,  of  a  spiritual  kingdom,  from    which  a 

e  ows  ip.  certain   number  of  mankind  would  be   excluded 

forever.  An  absolutely  wicked  and  hateful  soul,  unpossessed 
of  any  element  of  humanity,  not  to  say  of  divinity,  and  conse- 
quently unfit  to  live,  is  a  pure  figment  of  hate  and  amounts  to 
transporting  the  caste  of  pariah  into  the  celestial  city.  It  is  a 
contradiction  in  terms  to  enjoin  us  to  universal  charity  toward 
all  men  without  exception,  and  at  the  same  time  to  wish  us  to 
consent  to  the  absolute  annihilation  and  damnation  of  some  of 
them.  We  are  naturally  and  morally  too  intimately  related 
for  certain  of  us  to  be  condemned  definitively  to  death  with- 
out the  rest  of  us  being  impeded  on  our  upward  course  ;  we 
are  bound  to  each  other  by  our  love  of  humanity  like  Alpine 
climbers  by  the  cord  that  passes  from  waist  to  waist,  and  one 
of  us  cannot  slip  but  that  the  rest  of  us  feel  it,  nor  fall  without 
all  of  us  falling.  NiJiil  Juunani  alieniim ;  one  heart  beats  in 
the  bosom  of  humanity,  and  if  it  stops  forever  in  a  single 
human  breast,  it  will  stop  forever  in  the  breasts  of  those  also 
who  are  supposed  to  be  immortal.  The  best  of  us,  those  who 
would  be  fit  to  receive  baptism  into  immortality,  would  do  as 
the  barbarous  and  pagan  chief,  who,  after  having  washed  away 
his  sins  in  the  holy  water  of  the  font,  with  salvation  in  his 
hand  and  Paradise  before  his  eyes,  demanded  suddenly  what 
would  be  the  fate  of  his  former  companions  who  had  died  un- 
converted, and  whether  he  should  find  them  in  heaven.  "No,"' 
replied  the  priest,  "they  will  be  among  the  miserable  and  the 
damned, and  thou  amongst  the  blessed."  "  I  will  go,  then, among 
the  damned,  for  I  wish  to  go  where  I  shall  find  my  companions 
in  arms.     Adieu!"     And  he  turned  his  back  upon  the  font. 

The  hypothesis  of  conditional  immortality  can,  therefore, 
be  maintained  only  by  eliminating  from  it  the  doctrine  of  a 
creator  of  absolute  merit,  of  virtue,  and  of  univer- 
sal  and  mfinite  chanty;  thus  diminished,  it  be- 
comes a  belief  in  a  sort  of  natural  or  metaphysical  necessity  to 
which  beings  are  subject  according  to  their  degree  of  perfec- 


THE  PRINCIPAL  METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES.        515 

tion  simply.  This  hypothesis  is  essentially  anti-providential, 
and  in  harmony  only  with  systems  more  or  less  analogous  to 
that  of  Spinoza. 

In  t;eneral  the  notion  of  eternal  life  is  altogether  transcend- 
ent and  a  fit  subject  for  mystical  dreams  only.  Let  us,  there- 
fore, abandon  this  high  ground  and  descend  to  nature  and 
experience.  Instead  of  talking  of  eternity,  let  us  speak  of  life 
after  death  and  of  an  immortality  not  conditional,  but  condi- 
tioned by  the  laws  of  matter  and  of  mind  and  attainable  by 
everyone. 

II.  Let  us  take  our  stand  in  the  beginning  on  positive  expe- 
rience, and  consider  what  sort  of  immortality  the  philosophy 

of  evolution  permits  us  to  hope  for.     There  exists 
Does  personal-       ■         ,  ,  r  -  1 

ity  contain  a  ^   the   sphere   ot    consciousness,   so  to   speak,  a 

permanent  series  of  concentric  circles  which  lie   closer  and 

element  ?  r     1  1  1  1  • 

closer  about  an  untathomable  centre,  personality. 

Let  us  pass  in  review  the  diverse  manifestations  of  personal- 
ity and  see  if  they  contain  any  imperishable  element. 

The  most  external,  and,  in  some  sort,  the  most  observable 

aspect  of  mankind,  consists  in  their  works  and  actions.    Where 

material  works  alone    are  concerned,   such  as  a 

One's  works        house  that  one  has  built,  a  picture  that  one  has 

immortal.  '       ^ 

painted,  a  statue  that  one  has  modelled,  it  may 
be  felt  that  the  distance  between  the  worker  and  the  work  is 
too  great,  and  that  immortality  in  one's  work  is  too  much  like 
a  sort  of  optical  illusion.  But  when  intellectual  and  moral 
works  are  concerned,  the  effect  and  the  cause  are  more  nearly 
one  ;  therein  lies  the  element  of  truth  contained  in  the  highly 
impersonal  and  disinterested  doctrine  that  one  lives  in  one's 
works.  Intellectual  and  moral  labours  are  more  than  their 
mere  material  effect.  The  good  man's  highest  wish  is  to  live 
and  live  again  in  his  good  actions;  the  thinker's  highest  wish 
is  to  live  and  live  again  in  the  thought  that  he  has  contributed 
to  the  inheritance  of  humanity.  This  doctrine  may  be  found 
in  almost  all  great  religions  and  is  capable  of  subsistence  in  the 
domain  of  pure  science.  According  to  the  modern  Buddhists 
of  India  a  man's  actions  are  his  soul,  and   it   is  this  soul  that 


5i6  NON-RELIGION   OF    THE   FUTURE. 

survives  liis  death,  and  transmigration  of  souls  is  simply  the 
constant  transformation  of  good  into  better,  and  evil  into 
worse ;  the  immortality  of  one's  soul  is  the  immortality  of 
one's  actions,  which  continue  to  operate  forever  in  the  world 
according  to  their  original  force  and  direction. 

Generation  after  generation  labours  at  the  task,  and  passes 
the  token  of  hope  from  hand  to  hand.  Heri  meinn,  tinim 
hodie,  yesterday  was  mine  and  I  spent  it  in  doing 
human  eS.°^  go^^'  ^"t  not  enough  good  ;  to-day  is  thine  :  em- 
ploy the  whole  of  it,  do  not  lose  an  hour  of  it ;  if 
an  hour  dies  sterile,  it  is  a  chance  lost  of  realizing  the  ideal. 
Thou  art  master  of  to-day  ;  do  what  in  thee  lies  to  make  to- 
morrow what  thou  wouldst  have  it,  let  to-morrow  be  always  in 
advance  of  to-day,  and  the  horizon  that  men  see  each  fresh 
morning  be  brighter  and  higher  than  the  one  they  saw  before. 

The  action   must   be  followed  into   its  effects,  or  into  the 

effect    of    those    effects,  and    so    on    infinitely.     Our  conduct 

stretches  away  ad  infijiitmn,  beyond  the  reach  of 

Nothing  lost.  ^  T7  r  ^i  i         i        •      i 

our  knowledge,     hven  from  the  purely  physical 

and  physiological  point  of  view,  neither  intended  nor  at- 
tempted goodness  is  ineffective,  since  both  thought  and  desire 
develop  the  mind.  The  very  notion  of  what  is  to-day  chimeri- 
cal corresponds  to  a  real  movement  in  our  brains ;  it  is  a  men- 
tal force  which  contains  its  element  of  verity  and  influence. 
We  inherit  not  only  what  our  fathers  did,  but  what  they  could 
not  do,  what  they  attempted  and  did  not  achieve.  We  are 
still  alive  with  the  devotion  and  sacrifice  of  our  ancestors, 
with  the  courage  that  perhaps  they  spent  in  vain,  as  we  feel 
in  the  spring  the  breath  of  distant  antedeluvian  springs  and 
the  loves  of  the  tertiary  period. 

The  ability  of  the  present  generation  has  been  made  possible 
by  the  stumbling  and  mistakes  of  generations  in  the  past ;  and 

this  embryonic  and  successless   past   constitutes 
Failure  in  the        ,  re  t         i  i  • 

past  the  gnaran-    the  guarantee  oi  our  future.     In  the  moral,  as  m 

tee  of  success  in  ^\^q  physiological  world,  there  are  instances  of 
the  future.  ,       .Y.  ,        ^  ,.      ,  , 

fertility  that  are  not  yet  explicable,     bometimes 

long  after  the  death  of  the  man  who  first  loved  her  the  woman 

brings  forth  a  child  that   resembles  him  ;  and  humanity  may 


THE  PRIXCIPAL   METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES.        517 

bring  forth  a  civilization  on  the  model  of  some  ideal  cherished 
i\\  the  past,  even  when  the  past  seems  to  be  buried  forever,  if 
the  ideal  contains  some  obscure  element  of  truth  and,  by  con- 
sequence, of  imperishable  force.  What  has  once  really  lived 
shall  live  again,  and  what  seems  to  be  dead  is  only  making 
ready  to  revive.  The  scientific  law  of  atavism  is  a  guarantee 
of  resurrection.  To  conceive  and  desire  the  best  is  to  attempt 
the  ideal,  is  to  predetermine  the  path  that  all  succeeding  genera- 
tions shall  tread.  Our  highest  aspirations,  which  seem  precisely 
the  most  vain,  are,  as  it  were,  waves  which,  having  had  the  power 
to  reach  us,  have  the  power  to  pass  beyond  us,  and  may,  by  a 
process  of  summation  with  other  waves,  ultimately  shake  the 
world.  I  am  satisfied  that  what  is  best  in  me  will  survive,  per- 
haps not  one  of  my  dreams  shall  be  lost ;  other  men  will  take 
them  up,  will  dream  them  over  again  in  their  turn  until  they  are 
realized.  It  is  by  force  of  spent  waves  that  the  sea  fashions 
the  immense  bed  in  which  it  lies. 

In  effect,  in  the  philosophy  of  evolution  life  and  death  are 

recognized  as  relative  and  correlative  conceptions  ;  life  is  in  one 

sense  death,  and  death  is  the  triumph  of  life  over 

.  I^eath  'lot  Qj^g  ^f  jj.g  particular  forms.     Proteus  in  the  fable 

inevitable.  ^ 

could  be  prevented  from  changing  his  shape  only 

by  being  caught  in  sleep,  which  is  the  image  of  death  ;  thus  it 
is  in  nature  ;  fixed  form  is  sleep,  is  death,  is  a  pause  in  the 
eternal  fluctuation  of  life.  Becoming  and  life  are  alike  form- 
less. Form,  individuality,  species,  mark  a  transitory  stoppage 
in  the  channel  of  life  ;  we  can  neither  seize  nor  hold  nature, 
except  when  it  is  laid  asleep,  and  what  we  call  death — my 
death  or  yours — is  itself  a  latent  pulse  of  universal  life,  like  one 
of  the  secret  vibrations  that  pass  through  the  germ  during  the 
months  of  apparent  inertia  during  which  it  is  making  ready 
for  the  later  stages  of  its  development.  The  law  of  nature 
is  eternal  germination.  A  man  of  science  was  one  day  holding 
a  handful  of  wheat,  that  had  been  found  in  the  tomb  of  an 
Egyptian  mummy.  "  Five  thousand  years  without  sight  of 
the  sun  !  Unhappy  grains  of  wheat,  as  sterile  as  death,  of 
which  they  have  so  long  been  the  companions,  never  shall 
their  tall  stalks  bow  beneath  the  wind  on  the  banks  of  the 


5i8  NON-RELIGION  OF   THE  FUTURE. 

Nile.  Never?  What  do  I  know  of  life,  of  death  ?  "  As  an 
experiment  simply,  without  much  hope  of  success,  the  man  of 
science  sowed  the  grains  of  wheat  that  he  had  recovered  from 
the  tomb,  and  the  wheat  of  the  Pharaohs  received  the  caress 
of  the  sun,  of  the  air,  and  came  up  green  through  the  soil  of 
Egypt,  and  bowed  beneath  the  wind  on  the  banks  of  the  sacred 
and  inexhaustible  flood  of  the  Nile.  And  shall  human  thought, 
and  the  higher  life  which  stirs  in  us  like  the  germ  in  the  seed, 
and  love  that  seems  to  sleep  forever  in  the  tomb,  not  have^ 
this  reawakening  in  some  unforeseen  springtime,  and  not  be 
brought  face  to  face  with  eternity,  which  seems  at  present  to 
be  buried,  once  and  for  all,  in  darkness?  What  is  death,  after 
all,  in  the  universe,  but  a  lesser  degree  of  vital  heat,  a  more  or 
less  transitory  lowness  of  temperature  ?  Death  cannot  be 
powerful  enough  to  hold  life  and  its  perpetual  youth  in  check, 
and  to  prevent  the  infinite  activity  of  thought  and  of  desire. 

III.  Yes,  I  and  my  works  shall  survive;  but  is  immortality 

in  this  sense  sufficient  to  satisfy  the  religious  sentiment  ?     As 

T  an  individual,  what  do   science   and   the  philoso- 

Is  a  more  per-  '  _  ^ 

sonal  immortality  phy  of  evolution  promise  me  or  permit  me  to 
possib  e  hope  ?     A  somewhat  external  and  impersonal  im- 

mortality is,  as  we  have  seen,  possible  ;  is  anything  in  the  nature 
of  an  internal  or  personal  immortality  likewise  possible  ? 

Assuredly,  it  is  not  of  science  that   the  individual  can  de- 
mand proofs  of  his  permanence.     The  fact  of  generation  is,  in 
„  ,  the  eves  of  the  man  of  science,  in  and  of  itself  a 

Science  an-  ^ 

swers  in  the  negative  of  individual  immortality  ;  the  social  in- 

negative,  stinct  which  opens  our  hearts  to  thousands  of  other 

beings  emphasizes  the  negation,  and  the  scientific  and  meta- 
physical instincts  themselves,  which  cause  us  to  take  an  inter- 
est in  the  sensitive  world,  in  its  laws  and  destinies,  diminish, 
so  to  speak,  our  importance  as  limited  individuals.  Thought 
breaks  the  limits  of  the  self  in  which  it  is  confined,  and  our 
breast  is  too  narrow  to  contain  our  heart.  Oh,  how  rapidly 
one  learns  in  science  and  in  art  to  make  small  account  of  one's 
self,  and  this  diminution  of  self-esteem  neither  lessens  one's 
enthusiasm   nor  one's  ardour,  but  adds  to  them   only  an  ele- 


THE  PRINCIPAL  METAPHYSICAL    H  YPOJUIES^Sr      $^9 

merit  of  manly  sadness  such  as  a  soldier  might  feel  who  says : 
"  I  count  for  but  one  in  the  battle,  nay,  for  less  than  that,  for 
but  a  hundred  millionth,  and  if  I  should  disappear  the  result 
of  the  contest  would  no  doubt  not  be  changed,  and  yet  I  shall 
stay  and  fight." 

Scientifically  considered,  individuality    is    a    sort    of    pro- 
visional native    land,  and    one's    native    land    is    a    sort    of 
magnified   individual   with  a  consciousness  com- 

Connsels  posed   of    ideas  and   sentiments,   and   one's   love 

Tesignation.  ^  ' 

for  one's  country  may  be  greater  than  one's 
love  for  such  and  such  an  individual.  Such  a  love  does  not 
prevent  us  from  understanding  that  our  country  will  not  be 
immortal  as  a  nation,  that  it  will  have  its  periods  of  growth 
and  of  decay,  that  the  obstacles  which  keep  peoples  apart  are 
caducous,  and  that  nations  incessantly  disappear  and  lose  old 
elements  and  take  on  new.  Why,  merely  from  the  fact  that 
we  love  our  own  individuality,  should  we  not  consent  to  the 
same  reasoning  in  regard  to  it ;  why  should  we  wish  to  im- 
prison it  forever  within  the  limits  of  the  same  individuality  ? 
If  a  nation  dies,  why  should  not  a  man?  If  it  sometimes 
amounts  to  divination  to  cry  out  as  one  falls  on  the  battlefield, 
"  Finis  patricB  !  "  does  it  any  the  less  surely  amount  to  divina- 
tion to  cry  out  in  the  presence  of  death,  "  Finis  individuce'' ? 
Could  Kosciusko  feel  that  he  himself  had  a  right  to  live  when 
Poland  and  the  ideas  and  beliefs  to  which  he  had  devoted  his 
life  were  no  more  ? 

A  young  girl,  a  relative  of  mine,  on  the  point  of  death  and 

unable  to  articulate,  signified   her  wish  for  a  piece  of  paper. 

When  it  was  given  to  her,  she  began  to  write,  "  I  do 

Dignity  of         not  want "     Death  suddenly  intervened   and 

resignation.  ^ 

interrupted  her  volition  before  it  could  find  expres- 
sion in  words;  the  thinking  being  and  the  expression  of  her 
thought  seemed  to  be  annihilated  by  the  same  blow.  The 
child's  protest,  like  her  life,  was  interrupted  in  the  middle. 
Volition  is  powerless  against  death,  and  it  is  useless  to  stiffen 
one's  will  against  the  final  blow.  On  the  contrary,  man's  sole 
superiority  in  death  consists  in  acceptance.  Pascal's  conscious 
reed  mi^rht   not  onlv  be  constrained  to  bend   like   any  other 


520  NON-RELIGION  OF   THE  FUTURE. 

reed,  it  might  bend  consentingly  and  respect  the  law  that 
requires  its  death.  Next  to  consciousness  of  his  own  power, 
the  highest  of  man's  privileges  is  consciousness  of  the  Hmits 
of  liis  power,  at  least  as  an  individual.  Out  of  the  very  dis- 
proportion between  the  infinity  that  kills  us,  and  the  nothing 
that  constitutes  us,  arises  the  sense  of  a  certain  greatness  in 
us;  we  prefer  to  be  stricken  by  a  mountain  rather  than  by  a 
pebble ;  we  should  rather  fall  in  a  struggle  against  a  thousand 
than  in  a  struggle  against  one  ;  so  that  intelligence,  by  meas-. 
uring  the  greatness  of  our  adversary,  deprives  us  of  regret  at 
our  defeat. 

To  desire  to  make  the  individual,  who  is  more  or  less  phys- 
ical   even  in  his  moral  nature,  eternal,  is,  in  the  eyes  of  the 
man   of  science,  a  remnant  of  egoism.      In    his 
Desiretosur-      judgment,  the   human  mind    should    accept  the 

Vive  egoistic,  j       t>  '  r 

death  of  the  individual  by  a  species  of  intellec- 
tual devotion  analogous  to  that  with  which  we  accept  the 
death  of  our  native  country.  Modern  men  of  science  may  be 
defined  as  those  who  have  no  hope,  ol  /x^  lypvrt^  iX-n-tBa,  as  St. 
Paul  said  ;  we  are  individually  of  too  small  account  in  the 
eyes  of  science  to  live  always  individually . 

Ought  we,  therefore,  to  consent  cheerfully  to  the  sacrifice  of 

self,  and  to  die  willingly  for  the  benefit  of  the  universal  life? 

So  far  as  one's  self  is  concerned,  one  can  make  the 

But  only  when  .-        i-    i  ,i       t      ,   ^i  -i  -i    -•  c  ,i 

it  relates  to  one's  sacrifice  lightly,  but  the  annihilation  ot  those  one 
^^^^'  loves    cannot    be    accepted    by  a    conscious   and 

affectionate  being.  It  is  in  vain  for  scientific  and  philosophic 
stoicism  to  urge  with  Epictetus  that  it  is  natural  for  a  vase, 
which  is  fragile,  to  break,  and  for  a  man,  who  is  mortal,  to  die. 
The  question  still  remains,  whether  what  is  natural  and  scien- 
tific ought,  as  the  Stoics  alleged,  to  satisfy  my  reason  and  my 
love.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  when  one  really  loves  another  per- 
son, what  one  endeavours  to  love  is  not  the  element  of  fragility, 
the  vase  of  clay,  but  the  intelligence  and  the  heart,  which 
Epictetus  declines  to  consider  separately  from  their  perishable 
accompaniments.  One  attaches  one's  self  to  them  as  to  some- 
thing permanent ;  one  corrects  and  transfigures  nature  itself. 


THE  PRINCIPAL   METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES.        521 

and  passes  in  thought  beyond  the  brutality  of  its  laws,  and 
therein  lies,  perhaps,  the  very  essence  of  the  love  of  another. 
If  the  laws  of  nature,  after  seeming  for  a  moment  to  be  sus- 
pended and  vanquished  by  the  force  of  one's  disinterested 
love,  subsequently  break  the  bond  that  holds  them  in  check, 
is  it  surprising  that  one's  love  should  still  hold  out  against 
them  ?  It  is  not  only  pain  that  I  experience  at  being  baffled 
by  the  laws  of  nature  ;  it  is  indignation,  it  is  the  sense  of 
injustice.  The  Stoics  regarded  pain  as  a  passive  affection  of 
tiie  sensibility  simply,  but  moral  pain  implies  a  struggle  of  the 
will  against  nature,  and  an  effort,  as  they  themselves  admit,  to 
correct  it.  It  is  on  this  ground  that  pain  is  not  an  evil ;  its 
role  is  incessantly  to  impose  our  moral  and  social  ideal  on 
our  physical  nature,  to  force  it  to  perfect  itself ;  pain  is 
the  principle  of  development  in  life,  and  if  there  exists  a 
means -of  vanquishing  death,  it  is  perhaps  by  virtue  of  pain 
that  we  shall  arrive  at  it.  We  are  right,  therefore,  in  rebelling 
against  nature's  powers  of  life  and  death,  in  so  far  as  she  exer- 
cises them  for  the  purpose  of  annihilating  what  is  morally  best 
in  us  and  in  others. 

True  love  should  never  be  expressed  in   the   language    of 

time.     We  say:  "  I  loved  my  father  during  his  lifetime;  I  was 

deeply  attached    to   my   mother  or    my    sister." 

Love  under  the  -v^yhy  locate  it  in  the  past  ?     Why  not  say  always : 

form  of  eternity.  ^  ^  -  , , 

"  I  love  my  father  or  my  mother?'       Does   not, 

and  should  not,  love  lay  claim  to  an  eternal  present? 

How  could  one  say  to  a  mother  that  there  is  nothing  truly 
and  definitively  alive,  personal,  unique,  in  the  at  once  smiling 
and  meditative  eyes  of  the  child  she  holds  upon 
thS>Tnal,°^  her  knees;  that  the  little  being  that  she  dreams 
of  mature,  and  good,  and  great,  is  a  simple  inci- 
dent in  the  life  of  the  species  ?  No  ;  her  child  is  not  like  any 
other  that  has  ever  lived  or  that  ever  will  live  ;  none  other 
could  possess  that  look.  Nowhere  among  the  generations  of 
men  can  there  exist  a  fac-simile  of  the  beloved  face  before  one. 
All  nature  does  not  possess  the  equivalent  of  the  individual, 
which  it  can  destroy,  but  not  replace.  It  is  not,  therefore, 
without    reason    that    love  refuses  to  consent  to  the    substi- 


522  NOX-RELIGION  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

tution  of  one  individual  for  another,  which  constitutes  the  very 
movement  of  Hfe ;  it  cannot  reconcile  itself  to  the  eternal 
whirl  in  the  dust  of  being;  it  is  bent  on  fixing  life,  on  arresting 
the  world  in  mid-progress.  But  the  world  does  not  stop  at  its 
bidding.  The  future  calls  to  generation  after  generation,  and 
this  powerful  force  of  attraction  is  also  a  force  of  dissolution. 
Nature  gives  birth  by  means  of  death,  and  the  joy  of  new  loves 
is  composed  of  the  fragments  of  the  old. 

This  protest  of  love  against  death,  against  the  dissolution 

of  the  individual,  attaches  also  to  the  lower  animals.     A  doc, 

it  seems,  has  only  a  market  value,  and  yet  can  I 

The  protest  of  ,         '         .  -"        ,  ,     ,,    ,  ,  .      , 

love  against  death  ever  buy  agam  one  that  shall  be  the  equivalent 
not  limited  to         ^f  ^\^\^  qj-j^   ^hat  has  died  before  my  eyes  ?     He 

humanity.  .  -'       ■' 

loved  me  with  all  the  power  of  his  unhappy 
being,  and  endeavoured  to  hold  fast  to  me  while  he  was  slip- 
ping away,  and  I  endeavoured  to  hold  him  fast.  Does  not 
every  being  that  loves  acquire  a  right  to  immortality  ?  Yes ; 
the  ideal  of  affection  would  be  to  immortalize  all  conscious 
beings ;  nay,  more,  the  poet  who  is  delicately  sensitive  to  the 
individuality  of  a  flower,  or  a  ray  of  coloured  light,  of  the 
drop  of  dew  that  refracts  it,  would  wish  to  immortalize  all 
nature,  would  wish  to  view  under  the  form  of  eternity  the 
rainbow  that  quivers  in  a  soap  bubble  ;  for  can  any  two  bub- 
bles ever  be  the  same  ?  And  yet,  while  the  poet  aims  thus  at 
holding  everything  fast,  at  preserving  everything,  at  fixing  his 
dreams,  at  enchaining  the  ocean  of  life,  the  man  of  science 
replies  that  the  eternal  flood  must  be  allowed  to  pulsate,  to 
engulf  our  tears  and  our  blood,  and  that  the  world  must  be 
left  free.  For  the  man  of  science,  the  flux  and  reflux  and  prog- 
ress of  life  are  more  sacred  than  the  love  of  the  individual. 

Thus,  in  the  question  of  individual  immortality,  two  great 

forces  drag  human  thought  in  opposite  directions.     Science  is 

Antagonism        inclined   everywhere  to  sacrifice  the  individual  in 

between  love         the  name  of  natural  evolution;  love  is  inclined,  in 

and  science.  .1  r       1  •    1  ^  ^  •    1  1    ,  • 

tlie  name  of  a  higher  moral  and  social  evolution, 
to  preserve  the  individual.  The  antinomy  is  one  of  the  most 
disquieting  that  the  philosophic  mind  has  to  deal  with. 


THE   PRIXCIPAL   METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES.        523 

Should  science  be  admitted  to  be  wholly  in  the  right,  or 
must  we  believe  that  an  element  of  truth  exists  in  the  social 
.  instinct  which  lies  at  the  basis  of  affection,  as 
may  sMvTve!^  °^^  ^^^^^^  ^^  ^  presentiment  and  anticipation  of  the 
truth  in  all  great  natural  instincts  ?  The  social 
instinct  possesses  a  greater  value  at  the  present  day,  because 
philosophers  are  beginning  to  consider  even  the  individual  as 
a  society,  and  to  recognize  association  as  a  universal  law  of 
nature.  Love,  which  is  the  power  of  cohesion  at  its  highest 
degree,  is  perhaps  right  in  its  desire  for  an  element  in  the  asso- 
ciation between  individuals.  Its  sole  error  is  that  of  exas-o-erat- 
ing  its  pretensions  and  of  misplacing  its  hopes.  After  all,  one 
must  not  be  too  exacting  nor  ask  too  much  of  nature.  A  true 
philosopher,  even  for  those  that  he  loves,  should  not  shrink 
from  proof  by  fire,  and  death  is  the  flame  that  purifies  while  it 
consumes.  If  anything  survives  the  ordeal  that  alone  is  much, 
and  if  what  survives  is  precisely  what  is  best  in  us,  what  more 
can  be  asked  ?  One  may  break  the  vase,  of  which  Epictetus 
speaks,  but  the  perfume  remains,  and  floats  out  into  the  air, 
and  becomes,  no  doubt,  ultimately  indistinguishable,  but  still 
subsists. 

The  science  which  seems  to  offer  the  strongest  opposition  to 

the  preservation  of  the  individual  is  mathematics,  which  recog- 

-,   .  ,         ^       nizes  the  existence   of   nothing  in  the  world  but 
Sociology  and  •    i_  i  • 

the  problem  of        variable  and  equivalent  figures  and  abstractions. 
ty.  Qj^   ^j^^   contrary,  perhaps  the   most  concrete  of 

the  sciences,  sociology,  recognizes  everywhere  groups  of  reali- 
ties ;  sociology  therefore  cannot  hold  relations  that  arise  out 
of  association,  nor  the  terms  between  which  they  exist,  so 
cheap.  Let  us  consider  whether,  from  the  point  of  view  of  a 
more  complete  and  more  concrete  science,  consciousness, 
which  is  the  principle  of  personality,  properly  so  called,  neces- 
sarily and  forever  excludes  the  possibility  of  indefinite  dura- 
tion that  all  great  sciences  attribute  to  the  spirit. 

III.  Antique  metaphysics  gave  too  much  attention  to  ques- 
tions t)f  substance,  to  considering  whether  the  soul  is  simple  or 
complex.     The  question  amounts  to  whether  the  soul  is  made 


524  NOX-KKLIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

of  indivisible   or  divisible  material ;  it  assumes  as  the  basis  of 
tlic  phenomena  of   mind,  an  imaginary  and  in  some  sort  ex- 
tended substance.     It  was  upon  this  •  doctrine  of 

The  basis  of  ,         •         i  i  .1     ^    ^i         i  ^      .•  r 

existence  not  the  Simple  substance  that  the  demonstration  ot 

substance  but         ^he  immortality  of  the  soul  was  founded.     Evo- 

activity.  ,..,.,,  ,  ^ 

lutionist    philosophy    tends  to   hx   our  attention 

nowadays,  not  on  the  substance,  but  on  the  way  the  substance 
behaves,  that  is  to  say,  in  physical  terms,  on  movements.'  Con- 
sciousness is  a  certain  action  accompanied  by  a  certain  collectiv.e 
unity  of  movements.  If  it  exists  in  a  substance  it  is  not  the 
duration  of  this  substance  that  interests  us,  but  that  of  its  activ- 
ity, since  it  is  that  activity  which  constitutes  our  consciousness. 
VVundt  is  one  of  the  contemporary  philosophers,  who,  after 
Aristotle,  Hume,  Berkeley,  and  Kant,  has  best  shown  the 
illusiveness  of  endeavouring  to  discover  a  simple 
exilTencTmeans      substancc   underlying  consciousness.     It  is  only 

continuity  of         internal  experience,  he   says,  only  consciousness 
function.  ^  '  -^    '  ,  ,        .  ,. 

itself,  that  comes  to  us  guaranteed  by  immediate 
certainty.  And  this  implies,  he  adds,  "  that  all  these  substances 
which  spiritualism  regards  as  the  basis  of  subjective  or  objective 
experience  are  of  the  highest  degree  of  uncertainty,  for  in  no 
experience  whatsoever  are  they  given.  They  are  deliberate 
fictions,  by  the  aid  of  which  it  has  been  attempted  to  explain 
the  unity  of  experience."  The  true  explanation  of  this  unity 
should  be  sought  for  elsewhere  in  continuity  of  function,  and 
not  in  simplicity  of  substance.  "The  consecutive  effects  of 
anterior  states  combine  with  those  which  arise  later ;  in  this 
way  there   is  caused  a   subjective  continuity  of  states  which 

'"  Whoever  says  that  he  cannot  conceive  an  action  without  a  substratum  con- 
fesses by  his  very  words  that  the  alleged  substratum  which  he  conceives  is  a  prod- 
uct of  his  imagination  ;  it  is  his  own  thought  that  he  is  obliged  to  place  as  a  sup- 
port behind  the  reality  of  things.  By  a  pure  illusion  of  the  imagination,  after  one 
has  stripped  off  from  an  object  the  only  qualities  that  it  possesses,  one  affirms  that 
something  of  it,  one  knows  not  what,  still  subsists."  (Schelling,  System  of 
Transcendental  Idealism.^ 

"  To  be,"  said  Berkeley,  "  is  to  be  this  or  that.  Simply  to  be,  without  explana- 
tory addition,  is  to  be  nothing;  it  is  a  simple  conception,  if  not  a  word  void  of  sense." 

"Berkeley's  object  was  to  overthrow  the  hypothesis  of  a  substance  lying  beyond 
the  range  of  spirit,  as  an  imperceptible  support  of  the  qualities  of  which  our  senses 
take  cognizance."     (Felix  Revaisson,  La  Philosophie  en  France,  9.) 

See  also  M.  Lachelier,  De  l' Induction. 


THE  PRINCIPAL  METAPHYSICAL  HYPOTHESES.        525 

corresponds  to  the  objective  continuity  of  movement,  which  is 
the  condition  of  unity  of  consciousness."  The  bindinn^  to- 
gether  of  successive  mental  states  is  lacking  in  bodies,  although 
they  must  possess  the  germ  of  action  and  of  sensation.  For  this 
reason  Leibnitz  was  right  in  saying  that  bodies  are  "  momen- 
tary spirits,"  which  forget  everything  immediately,  and  know 
only  a  present,  uncomplicated  by  a  past  or  a  future.  Con- 
scious life,  on  the  contrary,  by  the  very  means  of  changing 
elements,  realizes  a  continuity  of  mental  functions,  a  memory 
of  the  past,  a  certain  durability.  This  continuity  is  not  a 
result  of  simplicity,  but,  on  the  contrary,  of  the  higher  com- 
plexity that  belongs  to  mental  functions.  "  On  the  physical 
side,  as  on  the  psychical  side,"  says  Wundt,  "  the  living  body 
is  a  unity;  this  unity  is  not  founded  in  simplicity  but  in 
compositeness  of  a  high  degree  of  complexity.  Conscious- 
ness, with  its  multitude  of  combined  states,  is  a  unity  analo- 
gous to  that  of  the  bodily  organism.  The  absolute  correlation 
between  the  physical  and  the  psychical  suggests  the  following 
hypothesis:'  that  what  we  call  the  soul  is  the  internal  aspect 
of  what,  in  its  external  aspect,  we  call  the  body  that  contains 
the  soul.  This  way  of  conceiving  the  problem  of  correlation 
inevitably  leads  us  to  the  belief  that  the  essence  of  reality  is 
intellectual,  and  that  the  fundamental  attribute  of  being  is 
development  or  evolution.  Human  consciousness  is  the  highest 
point  of  such  evolution;  it  constitutes  the  nodal  point  in  the 
course  of  nature  where  the  world  recollects  itself.  It  is  not  as 
a  simple  being  but  as  a  product  evolved  out  of  innumerable 
elements  that  the  human  soul  is,  as  Leibnitz  says,  "  a  mirror 
of  the  world."  " 

From  this  modern  point  of  view,  which  is  a  development  of 
that   of  Aristotle,"  the  question  of  immortality  amounts  to 

The  problem  of     ^^^^^i^S  ^'^o^^  f^^  the  continuity  of  mental  functions 
immortality  at  the    may  be   supposed   to   extend  the  continuity  of 
one's  intellectual  being,  which  is  the  subjective 
unitj'  of  a  complex  multiplicity  aware  of  itself  as  such  ? 

'  This  hypothesis  is  identical  with  that  of  monism. 
■^  Wundt,  Psychologic,  vol.  ii. 

^  See  j\I.  Ravaisson,  La  M^taphysiqtie    d'Aristote,  vol.  ii.,  and  Rapport  sur  la 
Philosophic  en  France. 


526  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE   FUTURE. 

Note,  first,  that  even  in  the  external  world  we  are  not  with- 
out examples  of  indissoluble  compounds ;  certain  simple  atoms 
T  ,.    ,  ,,         are  compounds  of  this  sort.     The  atom  of  hydro- 

Indissoluble  ^  _  -' 

material  com-  gen  is  a  vortex  of  little  worlds.  Well,  is  there 
P°'^'^  ^"  nothing  indissoluble   in  the  universe   except  so- 

called  atoms,  so-called  physical  "  individuals,"  and  is  it  unper- 
missible  to  conceive,  on  the  subjective  side,  individuals  more 
worthy  of  the  name,  whose  duration  is  guaranteed  by  the 
very  fact  of  their  complexity  ? 

According  to  the  reigning  doctrines  in  physiology  and  ex- 
perimental psychology,  individual  consciousness  is,  as  we  have 
said,  a  compound  of  the  consciousnesses  of  all  the 
Restatement  of    ^^qj^  ^j^^^  ,^j.g  ^i-jited   {„   the  physical   organism.' 

the  problem.  _  _  _  ^    ■'  ° 

The  individual,  consisting  thus  of  a  society,  the 
problem  of  death  amounts  to  the  question,  whether  there  can 
exist  an  association,  at  once  solid  enough  to  endure  forever, 
and  flexible  enough  to  adapt  itself  to  the  ever-shifting  condi- 
tions of  universal  evolution. 

Tiiis  problem,  be  it  observed  in  the  first  place,  is  precisely 
that  which  human  societies  are  endeavouring  to  solve.     At  the 

lowest  stage  of  social  evolution  solidity  and  flexi- 

The  ideal  type     |^jjj,       ^^.^    ^^rely    united.      Egypt,   for    example, 

of  association,  -'        _  ■'  t>./ r  '  r     » 

was    solid    but    not    very    progressive.     A    stage 

higher  in  the  scale  of  evolution,  in  proportion  as  science  ad- 
vances and  personal  liberty  comes  to  be  recognized,  civilization 
becomes  both  more  solid  and  indefinitely  flexible,  and  at  some 
period  in  the  future,  when  scientific  civilization  shall  have  once 
mastered  the  globe,  it  will  possess  a  power  that  the  most 
compact,  and,  in  appearance,  the  solidest  masses  cannot  equal; 
it  will  be  firmer  than  the  very  pyramids,  and  will  at  the  same 
time  prove  increasingly  flexible,  progressive,  capable  of  adap- 

'  Association  or  grouping  is  the  general  law  of  organic  and  inorganic  existence. 
Society,  properly  so  called,  is  only  a  particular  case,  is  only  the  most  complex  in- 
stance, of  this  universal  law.  .  .  A  consciousness  is  rather  a  We  than  an  /.  It 
is  capable  of  union  with  other  consciousnesses  and  of  forming,  in  conjunction  with 
them,  a  more  comprehensive  and  more  durable  consciousness,  from  which  it  re- 
ceives and  to  which  it  communicates  thought,  as  a  star  both  borrows  and  commun- 
icates motion  in  the.  system  to  which  it  belongs.  (Espinas,  Des  Soci^th  aniniales, 
128.     See  also  M.  Fouillee,  La  Science  sociale  contemporaine,  1.  iii.) 


THE   PRINCIPAL   METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES.         527 

tation  to  every  variatio  1  in  the  environment.  The  synthesis  of 
complexity  and  stability  will  then  have  been  achieved.  The 
very  character  of  thought  is  increasing  adaptivity,  and  the 
more  intellectual  a  being  is,  the  greater  its  power  of  displaying 
the  qualities  which  are  most  advantageous  under  any  given  set 
of  circumstances.  The  eye,  which  is  more  intellectual  than  the 
sense  of  touch,  furnishes  a  power  of  adaptation  to  a  wider  and 
more  diversified  environment.  Thought,  which  is  more  intel- 
lectual than  sight,  enables  one  to  adapt  one's  self  to  the  uni- 
verse itself,  to  the  immensity  of  the  stars,  as  well  as  to  the 
infinite  pettiness  of  the  atoms  in  a  drop  of  water.  If  memory 
is  a  masterpiece  of  intellectual  record-taking,  reasoning  is  a 
masterpiece  of  flexibility,  of  mobility,  and  of  progress.  So 
that,  whether  individuals  or  nations  are  in  question,  the  most 
intellectual  are  those  which  possess  at  once  the  greatest 
amount  of  stability  and  of  adaptability.  The  problem  of 
society  is  to  unite  these  two  things,  the  problem  of  immortal- 
ity is  at  bottom  the  same;  the  individual  consciousness  being, 
as  we  have  seen,  itself  a  society.  From  this  point  of  view,  it 
seems  probable  that  the  more  perfect  one's  personal  conscious- 
ness is,  the  more  absolutely  it  possesses  both  durability  and  a 
power  of  indefinite  metamorphosis.  So  that,  even  admitting 
what  the  Pythagoreans  insist  upon,  that  consciousness  is  a 
number,  a  harmony,  a  musical  chord,  we  may  still  ask  whether 
certain  harmonies  may  not  become  sufficiently  perfect  to  en- 
dure forever  without,  on  that  account,  ceasing  to  enter  as 
elements  into  richer  and  more  complex  harmonies.  A  lyre 
might  vibrate  ad  infinitum  without  its  several  strings  losing 
their  respective  tonalities  amid  the  multitude  of  their  varia- 
tions. There  ought  to  exist  an  evolution  in  the  organization 
of  consciousness  as  in  the  organization  of  molecules  and  living 
cells,  and  the  most  vital  and  durable  and  flexible  combinations 
should  possess  the  advantage  in  the  struggle  for  existence. 

Consciousness  is  a  collection  of  associations  of  ideas,  and, 
consequently,  of  habits,  grouped  about  a  centre  ;  and  we  know 
that  habits  possess  an  indefinite  duration  ;  contemporary  phil- 
osophy regards  the  properties  of  elementary  material  sub- 
stances as  habits,  as  instances  of  indissoluble  association.     A 


528  NON-KELIGIO.V  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

vegetable  or  animal  species  is  a  habit,  a  type  of  grouping  and 

organic  form  which  subsists  century  after  century.       It  is  not 

„,   ,  proved  that  mental  habits  may  not  in  the  course 

The  last  stage  .  _     . 

in  the  struggle  of  evolution  achieve  a  fixity  and  a  durability  of 
or  existence.  which  we  posscss  to-day  no  example.  It  is  not 
proved  that  instability  is  the  definitive  and  eternal  character- 
istic of  the  highest  functions  of  consciousness.  A  philo- 
sophic hopefulness  in  regard  to  immortality  is  founded  on 
the  belief  that,  in  the  last  stages  of  evolution,  the  struggle  for 
existence  will  become  a  struggle  for  immortality.  Nature  will 
then  come  to  realize,  not  by  virtue  of  simplicity,  but  of  judi- 
cious complexity,  a  sort  of  progressive  immortality,  the  final 
product  of  natural  selection  ;  and,  if  so,  religious  symbols  will 
have  been  simply  an  anticipation  of  this  final  period.  We  shall 
have  wings  to  support  us  in  our  flight  through  life,  Riickert 
says,  wings  to  support  us  in  our  flight  past  death  ;  but  the  bird 
does  not  learn  to  fly  immediately  nor  at  once ;  the  hereditary 
habit  of  flight  must  have  been  acquired  and  developed  by  the 
species  because  of  the  advantage  it  brings  with  it  in  the  strug- 
gle for  existence.  Survival,  therefore,  must  not  be  conceived 
as  completed  at  a  bound,  but  as  slowly  perfected  by  a  gradual 
and  continuous  lengthening  of  the  average  span  of  life.  It 
must  be  shown,  however,  that  such  a  survival  would  constitute 
a  superiority,  not  only  for  the  individual,  but  for  the  species. 

And  now  let  us  consider  consciousnesses  in  their  relations 
to  each  other.  Contemporary  psychology  tends  to  the  doc- 
Psychology  and  ^""^  ^^^^^  different  consciousnesses,  or,  if  you 
the  communion  of  prefer,  different  aggregates  of  states  of  con- 
sciousness, may  combine,  and  even  interpene- 
trate, somewhat  analogously  to  what  theologians  mean  by 
communion  of  souls.  And  if  so,  it  is  permissible  to  ask 
whether,  if  consciousnesses  can  interpenetrate,  they  may  not 
some  day  come  to  possess  a  continuity  of  existence  ;  may  not 
be  able  to  hand  on  their  existence  to  each  other,  and  to  com- 
municate to  each  other  a  new  sort  of  durability  instead  of 
remaining,  as  Leibnitz  says,  more  or  less  momentary  ;  sup- 
posing always  that  such  durability  would  be  advantageous  to 
the  species. 


THE  PRINCIPAL   METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES.        529 

Mystical  intuitions  sometimes    contain    a    certain  presenti- 
ment of  the  truth.     St.  Paul  tells  us  that  the  heavens  and  the 

Possible  fre-  '^''^^^^^  ^^^^^^  P^^^  ^\^^y,  that  prophecies  and  lan- 
quencyofthis  guages  shall  pass  away,  but  that  one  thing  shall 
phenomenon.         ^^^^   p^^^^  ^^^  ^j^^^^   j^  charity,  or  love.     If  this 

doctrine  is  to  be  interpreted  philosophically,  the  bond  of  con- 
tinual love,  which  is  of  all  bonds  the  least  primitive  and  the 
most  complex,  must  be  conceived  as  capable  of  ultimately  be- 
coming the  most  durable  of  bonds,  and  as  tending  progressively 
to  embrace  a  larger  and  larger  proportion  of  the  whole  number 
of  the  inhabitants  of  the  celestial  city.  It  is  by  what  is  best, 
what  is  most  disinterested,  most  impersonal,  and  most  loving  in 
one,  that  one  achieves  communion  with  the  consciousness  of 
another,  and  such  disinterestedness  must  coincide  ultimately 
with  disinterestedness  in  others,  with  others'  love  for  one's  self ; 
and  there  will  arise  thus  a  possible  fusion  of  souls,  a  com- 
munion so  intense  that  as  one  suffers  in  the  bosom  of  another, 
so,  too,  one  may  come  to  live  in  the  heart  of  another.  To  be 
sure,  we  have  passed  here  into  the  limits  of  dreamland,  but  it 
is  to  be  remarked  that  such  dreams  are  extra-scientific,  and  not 
anti-scientific. 

Let  us  conceive  ourselves  as  existing  in  this  problematical, 
though  not  impossible,  epoch  when  individual  consciousnesses 

shall  have  achieved  a  higher  degree  of  complex- 
Vision  of  the         • .         „  J      r       u  •      i.  •  •  ^  11  •  ,       1 
ideal  society.         ^^^  ^^^  °^  subjective  unity,  and  along  with  them 

a  power  of  more  intimate  communion  than  they 
possess  to-day,  without  the  fact  of  that  communion  altogether 
breaking  down  the  bounds  of  personality.  They  will* commu- 
nicate thus  with  each  other,  as  the  living  cells  in  the  same 
body  sympathize  with  each  other,  and  contribute  each  to  form 
the  collective  consciousness;  they  will  be  all  in  all,  and  all 
in  every  part.  And  indeed  one  may  readily  conceive  means 
of  communication  and  of  sympathy,  much  more  subtle  and 
direct  than  those  which  exist  to-day  among  different  individ- 
uals. The  science  of  the  nervous  system  is  in  its  earliest 
stages ;  we  are  acquainted  as  yet  with  exaltation  as  a  state  of 
disease  only,  and  with  suggestion  at  a  distance  as  an  incident 
merely    of    hypnotism  ;  but    we    already    begin    to    be   dimly 


53°  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

aware  of  a  whole  world  of  phenomena  that  go  to  show  the 
possibility  of  a  direct  communication  between  different,  and 
even  under  certain  circumstances  of  a  sort  of  reciprocal  ab- 
sorption of  two  personalities.  Some  such  complete  fusion  of 
two  consciousnesses,  that  however  still  preserve  their  individu- 
ality, is  to-day  the  dream  of  love  which,  as  one  of  the  greatest 
of  social  forces,  ought  not  to  labour  in  vain.  Supposing  the 
power  of  communion  with  other  consciousnesses  gradually  to 
develop,  the  death  of  the  individual  will  manifestly  encounter 
a  greater  and  greater  resistance  on  the  part  of  the  several 
minds  with  which  such  an  individual  is  in  communication. 
And,  in  any  event,  the  minds  with  which  an  individual  is  in 
communication  will  tend  to  retain  an  increasingly  vivid,  and, 
so  to  speak,  living  memory  of  him.  Memory  at  the  present 
day  is  simply  an  absolutely  distinct  representation  of  a  certain 
being — an  image,  as  it  were,  vibrating  in  the  ether  after  the 
original  has  disappeared.  The  reason  is  that  there  does  not 
as  yet  exist  an  intimate  solidarity  and  continuous  communi- 
cation between  one  individual  and  another.  But  it  is  possible 
to  conceive  an  image  which  would  be  scarcely  distinguishable 
from  the  object  represented  ;  would  be  the  sum  of  what  such 
and  such  an  object  means  to  me  ;  would  be,  as  it  were,  the 
prolongation  of  the  effect  of  another  consciousness  on  my  con- 
sciousness. Sucli  an  image  might  be  regarded  as  a  point  of 
contact  between  the  two  consciousnesses  involved.  Just  as  in 
generation  the  two  factors  combine  in  a  certain  third,  which 
^  represents  them  both,  so  such  an  animated  and  beloved  image, 
instead  of  being  passive,  would  constitute  a  component  part  of 
the  collective  energy  and  purpose  of  one's  being ;  would  count 
for  one  in  the  complex  whole  that  one  calls  a  mind  or  a 
consciousness. 

According  to  this  hypothesis,  the  problem  would  be,  to  be  at 

once  loving  enough  and  beloved  enough  to  live  and  survive  in 

the  minds  of  others.     The  individual,  in  so  far  as 

Personal  ]^jg  external  accidents  are  concerned,  would  disap- 

immortality.  .  •       i  .  11  •         • 

pear  ;  but  what  is  best  m  hnn  would  survive  in 
the  souls  of  those  he  loves  who  love  him.  A  ray  of  sunlight 
may  for  a  time  record  upon  a  bit  of  dead  paper  the  lines  of  a 


THE  PRINCIPAL   METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES.        531 

face  that  no  longer  exists  among  the  Hving ;  nay,  human  art 
may  go  farther,  and  impart  to  canvas  or  to  stone  the  minutest 
resemblances  to  human  life  ;  but  art  has  not  yet  succeeded  in 
imparting  a  soul  to  Galatea.  Love  must  be  added  to  art  to 
achieve  that  miracle — men  must  love  each  other  so  completely 
that  they  become  identified  in  the  universal  consciousness. 
When  that  consummation  has  been  reached,  each  of  us  will 
live  completely,  and  without  loss,  in  the  love  of  our  fellows. 
The  power  of  love  is  not  limited,  like  that  of  light,  to  giving 
permar/ince  to  the  outward  appearances  of  life;  it  is  capable 
of  lending  stability  to  life  itself. 

Separation  on  such  an  hypothesis  would  be  as  impossible  as 
in  the  case  of  those  atomic  vortices  of  which  we  spoke  above, 

which  consisted  each  in  a  single  individual,  in  the 
ofde™h°^^^™        sense   that   no   force   could    break  them   up  into 

their  elements  ;  their  unity  lay  not  in  their  sim- 
plicity, but  in  their  inseparability.  Just  so  in  the  sphere  of 
consciousness,  a  manifold  of  conscious  states  may  conceivably 
form  a  luminous  ring  that  can  neither  be  broken  nor  extin- 
guished. The  atom,  it  has  been  said,  is  inviolable,  and  con- 
sciousness may  come  to  be  inviolable  dc  facto. 

Nay,  one's  secondary  and   reflected    life    in    the  minds  of 
other  people  might  even  come  to  be  more  important  than  the 

original   of  which   it    is    a    copy,   insomuch    that 
Triumph  of        ^   gradual    process    of    substitution    might    take 

place,  a  substitution  of  which  death  would  sim- 
ply mark  the  definitive  and  tranquil  accomplishment.  We 
might  feel  ourselves,  even  in  this  life,  entering  into  possession 
of  an  immortality  in  the  hearts  of  those  who  love  us.  Such  an 
immortality  would  be  a  species  of  new  creation.  Morality, 
and  religion  even,  are  in  our  judgment  simply  the  outcome  of 
moral  productivity  ;  such  an  immortality  would  be  simply  an 
ultimate  manifestation  of  the  same  thing.  And  if  it  were  once 
achieved,  the  opposition  that  the  man  of  science  to-day  per- 
ceives between  the  continuation  of  the  species  and  the  im- 
mortality of  the  individual  would  have  disappeared  in  a  final 
synthesis.  Death  closes  one's  eyes,  but  love  stands  by  to  open 
them  again. 


532  NON-RELIGION  OF   THE  FUTURE. 

The  point  of  contact  might  thus  be  found  between  Hfe  and 

immoitahty.     At  the  beginning  of  evolution,   death  was  the 

end  of  the  individual  and  the  light  of  conscious- 
Complete  snr-  .  11        • 
vivai  of  the          Hcss  ended  in  obscurity.     By  virtue  of  moral  and 

in  m  ua .  social  progress,  one's  friends  tend  to   remember 

one  after  death  with  increasing  intensity  and  for  longer  and 
longer  periods;  the  image  that  survives  the  original  fades  only 
by  degrees,  and  more  and  more  slowly,  as  the  course  of  evolu- 
tion advances.  And  it  may  be  that,  at  some  time  in  the 
future,  the  memory  of  beloved  beings  will  so  mingle  with  the  life 
and  the  blood  of  each  new  generation,  and  will  be  so  passed  on 
from  one  to  the  other,  that  it  will  become  a  permanent  ele- 
ment in  the  current  of  conscious  existence.  Such  a  persistent 
memory  of  the  individual  would  be  a  gain  in  power  for  the 
species,  for  they  who  remember  love  more  dearly  than  they 
who  forget,  and  to  love  dearly  is  advantageous  to  the  species. 
It  is  not,  therefore,  unpermissible  to  conceive  a  gradual  in- 
crease in  the  faculty  of  memory  by  natural  selection.  The  day 
may  come  when  the  individual  will  survive  in  as  detailed  and 
complete  a  fac-simile  of  what  he  was  in  his  lifetime  as  can  well 
be  imagined,  and  death  may  become  less  significant  than  a 
period  of  absence  ;  love  will  endow  the  beloved  object  with 
the  mystery  of  eternal  presence. 

Even  at  the  present  day  individuals  here  and  there  are 
sometimes  so  deeply  loved  that  it  is  doubtful  whether  or  no 
Exemplified  what  is  best  in  them  does  not  survive  their 
to-day  in  isolated  death,  and  their  minds,  unhappily  subject  to  the 
weaknesses  of  humanity  and  unable  as  yet  to 
break  through  the  limitations  of  the  physical  organism,  do  not 
really  succeed,  by  virtue  of  the  love  that  surrounds  them,  in 
achieving  an  almost  complete  immortality  even  before  their 
death.  It  is  in  the  hearts  of  those  who  love  them  that  they 
really  live,  and  in  all  the  world  the  corner  that  it  really  con- 
cerns them  to  be  able  to  call  their  own  lies  in  the  affections  of 
two  or  three  people. 

This  phenomenon  of  mental  palingenesis,  which  is  at  pres- 
ent isolated,  may  gradually  come  to  be  extended  to  the  whole 
of  the  human  species.     Immortality  may  be  an  ultimate  pos- 


THE  PRINCIPAL   METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES.        533 

session  acquired  by  the  species,  as  a  whole,  for  the  benefit  of 

all  of  its  members.     Every  individual  consciousness  may  come 

to  survive  as  a  constituent  part  in  a   more  com- 

Destined  to  be-    prehensive    consciousness.      Fraternity   may,    at 

come  common,  ^  j  j  ' 

some  time  in  the  future,  be  universal,  render  soul 
transparent  to  soul,  and  the  ideal  of  morals  and  of  religion  be 
realized.  Every  soul  will  be  reflected  and  mirrored  in  every 
other;  although  it  will  not  suf^ce  for  that  purpose  simply  to 
look  into  each  other's  eyes  unless  one's  heart  positively  shines 
through  them.  One  must  project  one's  own  image  into  the 
mirror  of  the  sea,  if  one  is  to  find  it  there. 

It  must,  of  course,  be  admitted  that,  if  such  speculations  do 
not  positively  stretch  away  beyond  the  limits  of  possibility, 
.,.,.  .  they  certainly  do  stretch  away  beyond  the  limits 
still  more  literal  of  actual  science  and  experience,  but  precisely 
immortality.  what  renders  all  such  hypotheses  uncertain  ren- 
ders them  also  forever  possible :  namely,  our  irrem.ediable 
ignorance  of  the  basis  of  consciousness.  Whatever  discovery 
science  may  make  in  regard  to  consciousness  and  its  condi- 
tions, it  will  never  ascertain  its  essence,  nor,  consequently,  the 
limits  of  its  possible  subsistence.  Pyschologically  and  meta- 
physically considered,  what  are  conscious  action  and  volition? 
Nay,  what  is  unconscious  activity,  what  is  force,  what  is 
efficient  causality?  We  do  not  know,  we  are  obliged  to  define 
subjective  activity  and  power  in  terms  of  objective  motion, 
that  is  to  say,  in  terms  of  their  effect,  and  it  will  always  be 
permissible  for  a  philosopher  to  deny  that  motion,  as  a  simple 
change  of  relations  in  space,  constitutes  the  whole  of  an  action, 
and  that  there  are  no  uncaused  movements,  no  relations  be- 
tween non-existent  terms.  And,  if  so,  how  are  we  to  know 
precisely  to  what  extent  activity  is  essentially  enduring  as  the 
emanation  of  a  subjective  power  of  which  motion  is,  as  it 
were,  the  visible  sign,  and  of  which  consciousness  is  the  imme- 
diate and  intimate  "apprehension."  Neither  word  nor  act  ex- 
presses all  of  us,  something  always  remains  unsaid,  and  will, 
perhaps,  remain  unsaid  to  the  end  of  our  lives — and  beyond. 
It  is  possible  that  the  foundation  of  personal  consciousness  is 


534  NON-RELIGION  OF   THE  FUTURE. 

a  power  as  incapable  of  being  exhausted   by  any  amount  of 
activity  as  of  being  confined  to  any  variety  of  forms. 

In  any  event  the  matter  is,  and  always  will  be,  a  mystery, 
which  arises  from  the  fact  that  consciousness  is  sui  generis,  is 

absolutely  inexplicable,  and  at  bottom  forever  ^ 
disp^roved!"  *  inaccessible  to  scientific  formulae  and  a  fit  sub- 
ject, therefore,  of  metaphysical  hypotheses.  Just 
as  being  is  the  supreme  genus,  genus  gencralissUmim,  in  the 
objective  world,  so  consciousness  is  the  supreme  genus  in 
the  subjective  world ;  so  that  no  reply  can  ever  be  given  to 
these  two  questions :  What  is  being,  and  what  is  conscious- 
ness? Nor,  therefore,  to  this  third  question,  which  depends 
upon  the  two  preceding:  Will  consciousness  continue  to 
exist? 

On  an  old  dial,  in  a  town  in  the  south  of  France,  may  be 
read  the  legend :  Sol  non  occidat !  May  the  light  not  fail  ! 
Such  is,  indeed,  the  proper  epilogue  \.o  fiat  lux.  Of  all  things 
in  this  world  light  is  the  one  upon  which  we  are  most  depend- 
ent ;  it,  of  all  things,  should  have  been  created  once  for  all, 
CIS  del ;  should  pour  down  from  the  heavens  through  all  eter- 
nity. And  the  light  of  the  mind,  which  is  more  powerful  than 
the  light  of  the  sun,  may  ultimately  succeed  in  eluding  the  law 
of  destruction  which  everywhere  in  the  book  of  nature  imme- 
diately follows  the  law  of  creation,  and  then  only  will  the  com- 
mand, fiat  lux,  have  been  accomplished.  Lux  non  occidat  in 
externum  I 

IV.  But,  it  will  be  asked,  what  consolation  and  encourage- 
ment is  there  in  all  this  for  those  who  do  not  feel  the  charm  of 

these  remote  hypotheses  concerning  the  outer 
las??Sor't.*'*^       limits  of  existence,  for  those  who  see  death  in  all 

its  brutality,  and  lean,  as  you  yourself  probably 
do,  in  the  present  state  of  the  theory  of  evolution,  somewhat 
toward  purely  negative  conclusions?  What  can  be  said  to 
them  when  they  stand,  as  they  believe  they  do,  on  the  brink 
of  annihilation?  Nothing  better  could  be  said  than  the  sim- 
ple and  somewhat  unfeeling  words  of  the  ancient  Stoics, 
who,    be    it    remarked    also,  were  themselves  disbelievers   in 


THE  PRINCIPAL   METAPHYSICAL   HYPOTHESES.        535 

the  immortality  of  the  individual :  "  Be  not  a  coward ! " 
Deeply  in  the  wrong  as  Stoicism  was  in  the  presence 
of  death,  in  its  insensibility  to  the  pain  of  love  which 
was  the  condition  of  its  power  and  of  its  progress  among 
mankind,  when  it  interdicted  attachment  and  commanded  im- 
passibility, it  was  right  when  it  recommended  insensibility  to 
one's  own  death.  A  man  needs  no  other  consolation  than  to 
feel  that  he  has  lived  a  complete  life,  that  he  has  done  his 
work,  and  that  mankind  is  not  the  worse,  nay,  is  perhaps 
the  better  for  his  having  existed  ;  and  that  whatever  he  has 
loved  will  survive,  that  the  best  of  his  dreams  will  some- 
where be  realized,  that  the  impersonal  element  in  his  con- 
sciousness, the  portion  of  the  immortal  patrimony  of  the 
human  race,  which  has  been  intrusted  to  him  and  constitutes 
what  is  best  in  him,  will  endure  and  increase,  and  be  passed  on, 
without  loss,  to  succeeding  generations  ;  that  his  own  death  is 
of  no  more  importance,  no  more  breaks  the  eternal  continuity 
of  things,  than  the  shivering  of  a  bit  of  a  hand-glass  does.  To 
gain  a  complete  consciousness  of  the  continuity  of  life  is  to 
estimate  death  at  its  proper  value,  which  is  perhaps  that  of 
the  disappearance  of  a  kind  of  living  illusion.  Once  more,  in 
the  name  of  reason,  which  is  capable  of  understanding  death, 
and  of  accepting  it  as  it  accepts  whatsoever  else  is  intelligible 
— be  not  a  coward  I 

More  than  that,  despair  is  grotesque  because  it   is  useless ; 
cries  and  groans,  at  least  such  as  are  not  purely  reflex,  origin- 
ally served  their  purpose  in  the  life  of  the  species 
DiffEity  of  r  •  i  ^       .  •  • ,  f 

resignation.  ^^   arousmg  attention   or  pity,  or  of  summoning 

aid  ;  it  is  to  the  fact  that  it  was  once  useful  that 
the  existence  and  propagation  of  the  language  of  pain  are  due  ; 
but  as  there  is  no  help  against  the  inexorable,  and  no  pity  to 
be  asked  for  in  a  matter  that  is  in  harmony  with  the  interests 
of  the  totality  of  things  and  conformable  to  the  dictates  of 
our  own  thought,  resignation  alone  is  the  proper  attitude  of 
mind,  or  rather  a  certain  inner  assent,  or  still  better,  a  smile  of 
detachment  and  intelligence  and  comprehension,  and  interest 
even  in  our  own  extinction.  What  is  beautiful  in  the  natural 
order  of  things  cannot  definitively  excite  despair. 


536  NON-RELIGION  OF    THE  FUTURE. 

If  anyone  who  has  experienced  the  pangs  of  death  should 

make  Hght  of  the  sort  of  consolation  here  referred  to,  we  reply 

^,       .,   .        that  we  are   not   ourselves  speaking  in  absolute 

Of  considering  ^  => 

one's  own  case  ignorance  of  the  visage  of  the  supreme  moment. 
impersona  y.  ^y^  have  ourselves  had  occasion  more  than  once 
to  look  death  in  the  face,  less  often  no  doubt  than  a  soldier  in 
active  service  ;  but  we  have  had  more  time  to  consider  it  at 
our  ease,  and  we  have  never  found  reason  to  desire  that  it 
should  be  veiled  by  an  irrational  belief.  It  is  better  to  see 
and  to  know  the  truth  ;  it  is  better  not  to  tread  the  brink  of  the 
precipice  with  bandaged  eyes.  To  disguise  death  is  to  pay  it 
too  great  a  compliment.  We  have  had  more  than  one  ex- 
ample of  it  under  our  eyes.  We  have  seen  our  grandfather, 
who,  by  the  way,  was  himself  not  a  believer,  stricken  down  by 
successive  attacks  of  apoplexy,  and  he  said  to  us,  smiling  in 
the  intervals  of  his  pain,  that  he  felt  but  one  regret,  and  that 
was  that  so  many  superstitions  should  be  in  existence,  and  that 
Catholicism  in  particular  (it  was  at  that  time  when  France  was 
aiding  the  Papacy)  should  still  be  in  power.  Note  also  that  the 
progress  of  science — in  especial,  of  physiological  and  medical 
sciences — tends  to  increase  the  number  of  instances  in  which 
death  is  foreseen  and  is  waited  for  almost  with  serenity.  The 
least  stoical  of  mankind  sometimes  feel  the  inclination  toward 
an  act  of  heroism,  which,  though  in  a  measure  forced  upon 
them,  is  nevertheless  not  without  its  dignity.  In  the  course 
of  certain  cases  of  protracted  disease,  such  as  consumption  or 
cancer,  the  patient,  if  he  possesses  the  necessary  scientific 
qualifications,  can  calculate  the  probabilities  of  his  life  and 
determine  within  a  few  days  at  what  time  he  will  die.  Bergot, 
whom  I  knew,  was  such  a  patient;  Trousseau  was  another,  and 
there  have  been  many  more.  Knowing  one's  self  to  be  con- 
demned, feeling  one's  self  to  count  for  but  one  in  the  infinity 
of  the  universe,  one  can  consider  one's  self  and  one's  progress 
toward  the  unknown  in  a  sense  impersonally. 

If  such  a  death  is  not  without  its  bitterness,  it  is  neverthe- 
less the  one  which,  of  all  others  perhaps,  is  likely  to  prove 
attractive  to  a  philosopher,  to  a  mind  with  a  passion  for  clear- 
ness, for  foresight,  for  comprehension.     For  the  rest,  in  the  ma- 


THE  PRINCIPAL   METAPHYSICAL  HYPOTHESES.        537 

jority  of  cases,  death  takes  its  victims  in  the  height  of  their 
vigour,  in  the  midst  of  the  struggle  for  existence  ;  it  is  a  matter 
of  a  few  hours,  Hke  birth  ;  its  very  suddenness  ren- 
bSg!"  ^''^^  ^  ^«^^s  it  less  redoubtable  to  the  majority  of  mankind, 
who  find  it  comparatively  easy  to  be  brave  in  the 
presence  of  a  danger  that  is  brief,  and  they  hold  out  against 
the  supreme  enemy  with  the  same  obstinate  courage  that  they 
would  display  against  any  other.  On  the  contrary,  when  death 
approaches  slowly,  and  deprives  us  of  our  strength  by  degrees, 
and  each  day  leaves  us  in  possession  of  something  less  than 
the  day  before,  another  source  of  consolation  is  open  to  us. 

It  is  a  law  of  nature  that  diminution  of  vitality  brings  with 
it  a  proportionate  .diminution  of  desire ;  a  man  cares  less 
Decline  in  in-  l<ecnly  for  what  he  feels  himself  less  capable  of 
terest  in  life  with  attaining.  Illness  and  old  age  always  make  us 
m  VI  a  1  y.  ^^^  j^^^  value  upon  the  joys  of  which  they  deprive 
us  which  they  first  render  bitter  and  then  impossible;  and 
the  last  joy  of  all,  that  of  bare  existence,  is  as  subject  to  the 
law  as  its  predecessors.  Consciousness  of  one's  inability  to 
live  brings  with  it  inability  to  desire  to  live;  it  becomes  a 
burden  to  draw  one's  breath.  One  feels  one's  self  dispersing, 
falling  into  dust,  and  no  longer  possessing  the  strength  to 
check  the  process  of  decay.  Moreover,  egoism  declines  with 
declining  strength  ;  as  we  approach  the  grave  we  gain  a  power 
of  estimating  ourselves  more  nearl)^  at  our  just  value,  of  un- 
derstanding that  a  faded  flower  has  no  right  to  live  ;  that,  as 
Marcus  Aurelius  said,  "  a  ripe  olive  ought  to  fall  from  the 
tree."  One  sentiment  alone  survives,  a  sense  of  weariness, 
of  extreme  weariness.  We  long  for  rest,  long  to  relax  the 
tension  of  life,  to  lie  at  ease,  to  have  done  with  it  once  for  all. 
Oh  I  to  be  no  longer  on  one's  feet.  The  dying  well  know  the 
supreme  joy  of  looking  forward  to  their  last  resting  place ! 
They  no  longer  envy  the  interminable  file  of  the  li\'ing  w'hom 
they  perceive,  as  it  were  in  a  dream,  vainly  marching  and 
countermarching  upon  the  surface  of  the  earth  where  they 
sleep.  They  are  resigned  to  the  solitude  and  abandonment 
of  death.  They  are  like  travellers  in  the  desert — worn  with 
fever,  and  fatigue,  and   unwilling  to   make  another  step  in  ad- 


53^  NOX-RELIGION   OF    THE   FUTURE. 

vance  ;  they  arc  no  longer  borne  up  by  the  hope  of  revisiting 
fanilHar  skies  ;  they  are  unable  to  surmount  the  remaining 
difficulties  of  the  way  and  request  their  companions  to  leave 
them,  to  march  on  without  them,  and,  stretched  upon  the  sand, 
watch  without  a  tear,  without  a  desire,  the  departing  cara\an 
creeping  away  toward  the  horizon. 

Naturally,  some  of  us  will  always  shrink   before  death,  and 
wring  our  hands,  and  lose  our  self-possession.     Some  tempera- 
ments  are  subject    to    vertigo,    to    a    horror    of 

Persistence  of      abvsses,  and  in  especial  to   a  horror   of  the  great 
curiosity.  y  '  r  &> 

abyss  toward  which  all  paths  converge.  Mon- 
taigne counsels  such  people  to  throw  themselves  blindly  over 
the  verge  ;  others  counsel  them  to  fix  their  eyes  till  the  end  on 
some  small  mountain  flower  in  the  crevice  of  the  rock.  The 
manliest  of  mankind  will  give  their  attention  to  the  depths  of 
space  and  to  the  heavens,  will  fill  their  hearts  with  the  immens- 
ity of  the  universe,  will  magnify  their  souls  to  the  limits  of  the 
abyss,  will  subdue  the  rebellious  individuality  in  themselves 
before  it  is  forcibly  subdued  for  them,  and  will  scarcely  be 
aware  of  the  precipice  till  they  have  fairly  passed  beyond  its 
brink.  And  for  the  philosopher,  who  is  essentially  a  worship- 
per of  the  unknown,  death  possesses  the  attraction  of  novelty; 
birth  only  excepted,  it  is  the  most  mysterious  incident  in  life. 
Death  has  its  secret,  its  enigma,  and  we  are  haunted  by  a 
vague  hope  that,  as  the  final  touch  of  irony,  it  may  be  re- 
vealed to  us  at  the  last  moment ;  that  the  dying,  according  to 
the  ancient  belief,  divine  it  and  close  their  eyes  only  to  shield 
them  from  an  intolerable  brightness.  Man's  last  agony  and 
his  last  pulse  of  curiosity  are  one. 


INDEX. 


Absoluteness  of  primitive  faith,  139 

Adler,  Felix.  367 

All-embracing  unity,  modernity  of 

concept  of,  39 
Alviella,  M.  Goblet  d',  254,  277,  352 
Amiel,  378.  466 
Analysis,  effect  of,  on  emotions,  461 ; 

destroys  irrational  joys  only,  466 
Ancestor  worship,  47 
Animal's    prayer,    74 ;    religion    in 

lower,  76 
Animate   and   inanimate,    obvious- 
ness of  distinction  between,  49 
Animism,  priority  of,  52  ;  dualistic, 

82 
Anomy,  religious,  374 
Antagonism   between    wealth   and 

population,  315 
Arnold,  Matthew,  23,  92,   143,    156, 

174,  189.  247,  259 
Art,    and  religion,  414  ;   necessary 

reforms  in,  418 
Asceticism,  211,  473 
Asia,  danger  from,  321 
Association,  ideal  tj^ae  of,  392 
Augustine,  Saint,  147 
Aurelius,  Marcus,  360 

B 

Baudelaire's  criminal,  406 
Baudrillart,  324,  332 
Beneficent  error,  14 
Bentham,  403 
Bertillon.  M.,  324,  337 
Bost,  Pastor,  184 
Buddhism,  362 
Byron,  407 


Caro,  M.,  387 
Catholicism,  203,  244,  247 
Cause,  conception  of  God  as  first,  88 
Celibacy,  306  ;  tax  on,  336 


Charity,   intolerance    a    perverted, 

147,  400 
Christianity,  359,  362;  main  strength 

of,    iSo  ;   the   error   of,    196  ;   and 

communism,  240 
Civilization,  menace  to  modern,  318 
Clergy,  impropriety  of  suppressing 

the,  274 
Colenso,  Bishop,  357 
Commune,  The,  244 
Communism  and  Christianity,  240 
Compensation,  notion  of,  75 
Comtes,  A.,  109 
Confessional,  the,  248 
Conservatism,  feminine,  7 
Constant,  Benjamin,  146 
Conway,  Moncure,  167 
Cosmism,  365 

Creation  hypothesis,  102,  433 
Credulity,  feminine,  29 
Crimes  of  French   Revolution  and 

Commune  not  due  to  non-religion, 

244 
Criminal,  Baudelaire's,  406 
Criminology  and  religion,  241 


D 


Darwin,  295 

Dead,  cult  for  the.  410 

Defect  of  French  mind,  20 

Definition,  by  Schleiermacher  and 
Feurbach,  of  religion,  3 

Delirium,  82 

Dependence  of  religion  upon 
morality,  192 

Determinism,  concept  of,  72  ;  recon- 
ciliation between  indeterminism 
and, 484 

Diderot.  222 

Dissolution,  possibility  of  arresting, 

497 
Divine    and    human    love,  conflict 

between.  201 
Divine  Providence,  notion  of  a,  85  ; 

futility  of  doctrine  of,  440 
Divinization,  69 


sw 


540 


INDEX. 


Doctrine     of     Divine     Providence, 

futility  of,  440 
Dogma,   unfitness  as   material    for 

education  of  religions,  272 
Dogmatism  and  intelligence,  150 
Doubt,  Morality  of,  382 
Dreams,  67,  82 
Dualistic  animism,  82 
Duty  of  civilized  races  to  multiply, 

319 


E 


Ecstasy,  religious,  222 

Education,  unfitness  of  religious 
dogma  as  material  for,  272  ;  by 
the  priesthood,  273,  282  ;  moral, 
280 ;  husband  responsible  for 
wife's,  310 

Egoism  and  mysticism,  conflict  be- 
tween, 204 

Eighteenth  century  view  of  mira- 
cles, 91 

Espinas,  526 

Essence  of  religion,  1,  10 

Ethical  Culture  Society,  367 

Evil  of  belief  in  a  Divine  Provi- 
dence, 97 

Evil,  problem  of,  433 

Experiment  in  miracles,  158 


F 


Fainting,  82 

Faith,    absoluteness    of    primitive, 
139;  complete  intellectual  rest,  in- 
cident to,  142;  willfully  blind,  143; 
transformation  of  inevitable,  234 
Fall  of  man,  doctrine  of  the,  439 
Family,  religion  of  the,  322 
Fanaticism,  possible  scientific,  395 
Father's  duty  in  regard  to  religious 

instruction,  286 
Feminine  credulity,  297;  conserva- 
tism, 297;  timidity,  298 
Fere,  M.  Ch.,462 
Fetichism,  44,  48,  65 
Fetichistic  monism,  primitive  meta- 
physics a,  81 
Feuerbach's  definition  of  religion,  3 
First  cause,  concept  of  God  as,  88 
Fiske,  Mr.  John,  452,  455-  5^2 
Force,  use  of  justifiable,  146 
Fouillee,  M.   Alfred,  7,  37,  435,  484, 

485,  493.  526 
France,  proposal   to  Protestantize, 
249;  gradual  improvement  of,  322 
French,  mind,  its  defect,  20;  Revo- 
lution, 250;  gaiety,  268 


Gaiety,  French,  268 

(rhoStS,   83 

(iift,  notion  of,  75 

God,  conceived  as  first  cause,  88, 
431;  as  ordered,  104;  as  creator, 
432;  responsible  for  evil,  433;  His 
omnipotence,  442;  hypothesis  of, 
a  non-omnipotent,  443;  disan- 
thropomorphization  of  concept  of, 
452;  possible  evolution  of  by 
natural  selection,  496 

God,  love  of,  131 ;  belief  in,  falls  with 
belief  in  devil,  165;  love  of,  on  the* 
wane,  205 

Goethe,  377,  400 

Grace,  doctrine  of,  200 


H 


Hartmann,  Von,  39,  108,  109,  464 

Hasheesh,  use  of,  defended,  223 

Havet,  M.,  355 

Hellenism,  261 

Henneguy,  Felix,  290 

Henotheism,  27,  39,  loS 

Hindu  tolerance,  32 

History  and  religion,  158 

Human  and  divine  love,  conflict 
between,  261 

Humanity,  religion  of,  365 

Humanization,  68 

Husband  responsible  for  wife's  edu- 
cation, 310 

Huxley,  480 

Hysteria,  S3 


Ideal  type  of  association,  392 

Idealism,  479 

Incuriosity  of  primitive  man,  51 

Indeterminism,  reconciliation  be- 
tween determinism  and,  484 

Individualism,  religious,  12 

Infinite,  concept  of  the,  34 

Inheritance,  injustice  of  present 
law  of,  338 

Initiative,  sentiment  of  personal,  98 

Instinct,  religious,  40,  229  ;  of  self- 
preservation  and  sociality,  44 

Instruction,  father's  duty  in  regard 
to,  286 

Insurance  and  religion,  161 

Intolerance,  incident  to  faith,  144  ; 
a  perverted  charitjs  147 

Invisible,  suffering  from  the,  a 
modern  malady,  35 


INDEX. 


541 


Immanence    of    conscious    life    in 

nature,  66 
Immortality,  importance  of  concept 

of,  119 

J 

Javal,  M.,  337,  341 
Jerome,  Saint,  355 
Jesus,  134,  187,  356 
Junqua,  Dr.,  183 

K 

Kant,  195,  3S0,  433,  447 


Lange,  4^5.  490 

Lavelaye,  M.  de,  249,  252,  284 

Lenormant,  M.,  285 

Leopardi,  468 

Lethargy,  82 

Liberal  Protestantism,  182 

Littre,  277,  2S8 

Livingstone,  302 

Love,  conflict  between  divine  and 
human,  201  ;  a  cerebral  stimulant, 
307 ;  makes  for  sanity,  308 ;  of  man- 
kind, future  of,  399 

Love  of  God,  131  ;  on  the  wane,  205 

Lower  animals,  religion  in,  76 

Luther,  193 


M 


Mainlaender,  Phillipp,  458 

Malthusianism,  317  ;  fallacy  of,  317  ; 
in  France,  325 

Marvellous,  primitive  man's  faith 
in  the,  137 

Materialism,  488 

Maternity,  girls  should  be  trained 
for,  333 

Medical  knowledge,  progress  of, 
and  religion,  162 

Menard,  M.  Louis,  249,  289 

Metaphysics,  primitive,  a  fetichistic 
monism,  81  ;  scope  of,  383;  in- 
stability of,  389  ;  present  direc- 
tion of,  424 

Michelet,  249,  320 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  173,  442,  461 

Mind  stuff,  490 

Misoneism,  125 

Miracles,  conception  of,  87  ;  not 
frauds,  90;  eighteenth  century 
view  of,  91  ;  but  illusions,  92  ;  ex- 
periment in,  128;  in  modern  times, 
353 


Modesty,  nature  or,  301 

Mohammedanism,  257,  361 

Molinari,  M.  de,  409 

Monism,  493 

Montesquieu,  329 

Moral  sentiment  defined,  7 

Moralism,  426 

Morality  and  religion,  114,  241,  362  ; 
dependence  of  religion  upon,  192; 
essence  of,  197;  apart  from  re- 
ligion not  hard  to  teach,  402 

Mormonism,  358 

Mliller,  Max,  24,  49,  233 

Mystery,  fear  of  thunder  due  to 
sense  of,  62 

Mysticism  a  perversion,  132  ;  con- 
flicts with  egoism,  204;  and  as- 
cetism,  211;  and  women,  299 

N 

Natural  phenomena  non-existent 
for  primitive  man,  64 

Natural  selection,  evolution  of  gods 
by,  496 

Nature  a  society,  55  ;  seeming  men- 
ace of  conscious  life  in,  66;  love 
of,  421;  inexhaustible  resources 
of,  500 

Neo-Christianity,  184 

Neutrality,  propriety  in  religious 
affairs  of  state,  277 

Newman,  Cardinal,  247 

Newman,  Mr.  Francis,  351 

Nirvana,  473 

Nonotte,  Abbe,  327 

Non-religion  defined,  8;  the  goal  of 
religion,  167;  not  responsible  for 
the  crimes  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion and  the  Commune,  244 

Novelty,  persistent  in  the  world, 
470 

O 

Omnipotence,  God's,  442 


Panthelism,  55-453 

Paraphysics,   religion   primarily  a, 

79  ,  .         . 

Parents,   not  protected  against  m- 

gratitude,  334;  should  be  taxed  in- 
versely to  number  of  children,  337 

Parve,  M.  Steyn,  283 

Pascal,  202,  440 

Pattison,  Mark,  365 

Paul,  Saint,  356 

Paul,  Vincent  de,  399 

Personal  initiative,  sentiment  of,  98 


542 


INDEX. 


Pessimism,  457;  an  optical  illusion, 
468 

Pillon,  M.,  249 

Polydemonism.  85 

Population,  antagonism  between 
wealth  and,  315;  importance  of, 
316;  inability  of  priest  to  cope 
with  question  of,  327;  decrease  of, 
encouraged  by  the  church,  328 

Positivism,  24,  109,  365 

Possession,  83 

Prayer,  the  animal's,  74  ;  kinds  of, 
distinguished,  217  ;  durable  ele- 
ment in,  217  ;  highest  form  of,  225 

Priest  and  prophet,  antagonism 
between,  128 

Priesthood,  origin  of,  126  ;  education 
by  the,  273,  282 

Primary   instruction    and   religion, 

159 

Primitive  man,  incurious,  51  ;  un- 
aware of  natural  phenomena  as 
such,  64  ;  and  novelty,  125  ;  and 
the  marvelous,  137 

Primitive  metaphysics,  a  fetichistic 
monism,  81 

Problem  of  evil,  433 

Prophet  and  priest,  antagonism 
between,  128 

Protestantism,  152,  167,  252  ;  liberal, 
182 

Providence,  notion  of  a  Divine,  85  ; 
evil  of  belief  in,  97  ;  futility  of 
doctrine  of,  440 


R 


Realism,  482 

Reconcilation  between  determin- 
ism and  indeterminism,  484 

Relics,  belief  in,  86 

Religion,  essence  of,  i,  10;  and 
science,  difference  between,  3  ; 
Feuerbach's  definition  of,  3  ; 
Schleiermacher's  definition  of, 
3,  487  ;  of  natural  origin,  22  ;  and 
superstition,  78  ;  primarily  a  para- 
physics,  79  ;  morally  retrograde, 
114  ;  and  physiology,  psychology, 
and  history,  158  ;  and  primary 
instruction,  159;  and  development 
of  commerce,  160  ;  and  insurance, 
161  ;  and  progress  of  medical 
knowledge,  162  ;  tends  toward 
non-religion,  167;  dependent  upon 
moralit}'-,  192;  and  crime,  241;  not 
essential  to  morality,  241 ;  deserted 
by  genius,  355;  of  humanity,  365  ; 
and  art,  414 


Religious  individualism,  12  ;  in- 
stinct, 40,  229;  ecstasy,  222;  in- 
struction, father's  duty  in  regard 
to,  286 

Renan,  17,  23,  40,  119,  126,  158,  172, 
227,  232,  236,  306,  321,  373 

Renouvier,  249 

Revelation,  essence  of  faith  in,  140 

Reville,  M.,  49,  114,  128,  417 

Revolution,  French,  244,  250 

Richet,  M..  337 

Romanes,  George,  62 


Sanction,   superfluity  of   religious, 

405 

Scepticism,  feebleness  of,  376 

Schelling,  524 

Schleiermacher's  definition  of  reli- 
gion, 3,  487 

Schoolmaster,    importance  of    the, 

277 

Schultz,  Professor  Hermann,  184 

Science  and  religion,  difference 
between,  3 

Secretan,  M.,  437 

Secularism,  365 

Self-preservation,  and  sociality, 
instincts  of,  44 

Sentiment,. definition  of  moral,  7 

Sermon,  transformation  of  the,  416 

Shadows,  82 

Sin,  morbid  preoccupation  with,  213 

Socialism,  369 

Socialty,  and  self-preservation,  in- 
stincts of.  44 

Society  for  Ethical  Culture,  367 

Sociomorphism,  religion  a,  2 

Somnambulism,  83 

Special  Providence,  440;  mankind 
to  be  its  own,  450 

Spencer,  Herbert,  44,  384,  427,  451, 
490 

Spinozism,  454 

Spirit,  genesis  of  concept  of,  82 

Stoicism,  520 

Strauss,  23,  417,  431 

Suffering  from  the  invisible,  a  mod- 
ern malady,  35 

Suicide,  as  a  resource,  472 

Superstition  and  religion,  78 

Symbolism,  9 


Taine,  227,  479,  490,  493 
Tax  on  celibacy,  306 
Theism,  429 


INDEX. 


543 


Theresa,  Saint,  134 
Thunder,  sense  of  mystery  respon- 
sible for  fear  of,  63 
Timidity,  feminine,  298 
Tolerance,  149  ;  Hindu,  32 
Totality,  concept  of,  39 
Transformation  of  the  sermon,  416 
Trent,  Council  of,  141 

U 

Unity,  modernity  of  concept  of  an 

all-embracing,  39 
Universal  Providence,  441 

V 

Vernes,  M.  Maurice,  281,  283 
Verrier,  Dr.,  344 


W 


Wealth,  antagonism  between  popu- 
lation and,  315 

Wife,  husband  responsible  for  edu- 
cation of,  310 

Women  and  mysticism,  299;  im- 
portance of  early  education  of, 
309 

Worship  of  ancestors,  47  ;  public^ 
126  ;  subjective,  130 


Zoolatry,  47 


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